IT HAS been rumoured for a wee while now, but it finally seems like the long-awaited "One-Asia" Tour is likely to kick off in 2009.
The Australasian Tour, the Korean Golf Association, the Japan Golf Tour organisation and the China Golf Association – but not yet, intriguingly, the Asian Tour – have agreed to join forces to, in their words, "provide the best possible platform to gr
ow elite tournament professional golf throughout the region and provide a much-needed consolidated pathway for the development of the next generation of champion regional golfers." Phew.
Translated, what that flowery language actually means is that none of the four circuits, with the possible exception of the Japanese, is currently strong enough to survive on its own. This, of course, is particularly tragic in the case of the Aussie Tour, a part of the world that owns and provides so many of the world's better courses and players. As of today, there are 13 Antipodeans ranked in the world's top-100. Only the US has more.
One has to imagine also that news of the Asian Tour's reluctance to join the party must have come as something of a relief to the European Tour. This season, the Wentworth-based circuit's schedule contains as many as nine highly lucrative co-sanctioned events with its Asian counterpart, a chummy and mutually beneficial situation that would clearly change should the Asians decide to take up with their nearer neighbours.
Which begs the question: how would a suddenly bereft European Tour fill its early-year schedule if Asia became off-limits? The smart money would surely be on Africa, specifically South Africa, where the Sunshine circuit already hosts three co-sanctioned European Tour events. Which isn't all bad news, of course. Such an eventuality would at least put an abrupt halt to all those terribly awkward – or unanswerable – questions about the lack of human rights in China.
I BRING you depressing news: the noble art of point missing is alive and well amongst way too many golfers. In a recent on-line survey conducted by Golf Digest, the world's biggest-selling golf magazine, 52.9% of correspondents felt that Zach Johnson's one-over par winning score at last year's Masters was "great" as they "love to see the players suffer".
In other words, more than half of America's hackers prefer to see the world's best golfers humiliated rather than have their talents enhanced and celebrated by a course set up to encourage enterprise and shot-making, not an endless stream of safety-first approaches played away from the tightly-cut pins and into the centre of the putting surfaces. Yawn.
And there's more. In another press release this week, the so-called "Bear Trap" – the revamped holes 15, 16 and 17 at PGA National in Florida – was deemed worthy of celebration because the field in the recent Honda Classic played them in a collective 356 over par, compared with a mere 254 over last year. This was hailed as a great success, apparently proving that "the improvements enhanced not only the quality of the course, but its difficulty".
The point being missed, of course, is that it is easy to make holes difficult. In fact, there is nothing easier. All you have to do is dig a big pit in front of each green and fill them with water, then put the pin a few feet from the front edge of the putting surface. Voila, difficult. And boring – especially if watching a succession of players putt from 35 feet behind the cup is not your idea of fun. The really difficult part is creating interesting, strategically challenging and playable holes for every class of golfer. Now that really would be worth a press release.
LAST autumn I had the pleasure of playing in the pro-am preceding the Women's Scottish Open over the Carrick course at Loch Lomond. It was both a fun and rather chastening experience.
In the same group was a diminutive 15-year-old girl by the name of Carly Booth. You may have heard of her, given that she was one of four Scots named to the Great Britain & Ireland Curtis Cup side that will take on the Americans over the Old Course at St Andrews in late May/early June. Anyway, Miss Booth proved to be not only a charming companion, but something of a mystery. How was it, I wondered, that a wee lassie could consistently out-hit a big hairy bruiser like myself?
It didn't take long to work out that the answer had a lot to do with technique – hers exemplary, mine flawed – and something of a contrast in the area of suppleness. It was when she started to do cartwheels down the fairway in exuberant celebration of yet another long drive that I mentally surrendered. Let's hope Carly and her three fellow Caledonians – Sally Watson, Krystle Caithness and Michelle Thomson – are moved to perform similarly jubilant calisthenics in the wake of a contest GB&I has not won since 1996.
NOT for the first time, Sandy Lyle this past week expressed an interest in assuming the role of European Ryder Cup captain when the matches make their first visit to Wales in 2010. This is entirely appropriate. Not only does the former Open, Masters and Players champion command universal respect for the undoubted quality of his playing career – for a brief period in the late 1980s the Shropshire-born Scot was the best player on the planet – he is also one of the nicest people in the game, a man who would easily unite any dressing room.
Sadly, however, the odds are that the likeable Lyle will go down as the only member of European golf's "Big Five" not to fill the role of skipper in the biennial contest with the United States. A combination of European Tour (petty) politics, his age and the drum beating that has already been set in motion by the well-connected Colin Montgomerie's various media mates, will probably see Lyle, who recently turned 50 and embarked on a new career on America's Champions Tour, passed over. Which is a shame, even if – whisper it – the best and most qualified man for the job is actually two-time Masters winner Jose Maria Olazabal.
IN THE immediate aftermath of his latest feat of superhuman behaviour on the golf course – holing that 24-foot downhill, left-to-right slider across the 72nd green to win the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill by a shot – Tiger Woods excitedly lifted his cap and slammed it to the ground.
It was a revealing move in more ways than one. Not only did Woods claim that, such was his concentration on the progress of his putt he was unaware of his spontaneous action, the sudden absence of said chapeau exposed to the world a rapidly receding hairline. Speaking as someone for whom this particular subject is close to the heart – and cranium – I find this enormously reassuring. At least in the area of classic male-pattern baldness, the Tiger is actually human. Come on slaphead, the Grand Slam beckons.
The full article contains 1196 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
