Waggle Room :: An SBNation Golf Blog

I mentioned a couple days ago that Tiger Woods once called TPC Sawgrass' No. 17 island green "gimmicky." He didn't think that hole should come so late in the round, with its potential to ruin an otherwise good round.

Today, Ernie Els had an otherwise good round ruined on No. 17, which he triple-bogeyed.

Els would probably use a word stronger than "gimmicky" to describe the 17th. In fact ...

"I think they should blow it up. You can't have a major championship ..." the South African said, catching himself before he said something he might regret later.

"Everything you've worked on for 4 1/2 hours is gone in one hole. I was so angry. I felt if I got in the house at 2-under, that would have been a great score."

Interesting that Els called it a "major championship." Those of you opposed to having a fifth major better make your peace with it (or be willing to downgrade the PGA Championship), because The Players will be a major some day, and very soon, and accepted as such by all involved.

Why? Because that's what the PGA Tour has been working toward for a long time. And soon, they will simply declare it to be so. And because everyone involved in making money off golf - the Tour, the players, the networks - will make more money off another major, they'll all fall in line. And that will be that.

Where's the T-Joh? She's in Austin at the NCAA Central Regional, which began today.

And she's also in the current issue of Golf World, the subject of a 2-page spread entitled "Somethin' Bruin." It's a great article on our funny, charming, self-effacing and tremendously gifted friend.

There are things Tiffany Joh will try to have you believe if you let the 21-year-old UCLA junior bend your ear. Like how she's the worst college golfer in the country.

OK, maybe not the worst, but definitely not as good as Amanda Blumenherst at Duke or Stacy Lewis at Arkansas or even fellow Bruin Maria Jose Uribe, the U.S. Women's Amateur champion. I mean come on, don't you know how awesome they are and how Joh is "just lucky to get the ball off the ground" some days?

When the conversation ends, though, do yourself a favor. Check out the UCLA women's golf website. You will find Joh actually has a tidy 72.0 average in nine tournaments this season, seven top-eight finishes and nothing worse than a T-13. You'll also learn the San Diego native was just named Pac-10 player of the year and is on the U.S. Curtis Cup team competing at St. Andrews later this month.

After that, you can talk to Joh's college coach, Carrie Forsyth, to clarify this getting-the-ball-airborne problem. "Her ball striking has always been exceptional," contends the nine-year Bruin skipper and former national coach of the year. "She's one of the best collegiate ball-strikers I've ever seen."

According to Derek Uyeda, a teaching professional at San Diego's Stadium Golf Center and Joh's instructor since high school, her swing actually is the model he uses for every player he instructs, male or female. "She will never say this," Uyeda explains, "but she has complete control of her golf ball."

If Joh exaggerates about her lack of ability, rarely mentioning the 2006 U.S. Women's Amateur Public Links title she has on her résumé, the same can't be said about her knack for finding herself in some embarrassing situations. There actually are several entertaining Joh stories that have become part of college golf folklore, some Joh, a communications major, has helped spread by writing about them on an Internet blog.

Like the time in the college event where she didn't notice until she was on the first tee that her skort was on backward. ("Had to go find a bush real quick," she says.) Or when she qualified for the LPGA's Safeway Classic last August and saw Nancy Lopez in the locker room. Joh was so star-struck, she literally walked into a wall as Lopez passed by. ("I'm not very good at multitasking.")

Then there was the one from last year's Pac-10 Championship: The night before the team was to leave for the tournament, Joh realized she had forgotten to pick up her golf clothes at the dry cleaners. The store was closed the next day, so Joh decided to spend the entire night outside the place in her Honda CRV, hoping the owner might appear anyway. "Sure enough he got there at about 5:30 a.m.," she recalls. "I had left about 20 messages on the store phone. He came out with my stuff and said 'Don't do that again.' " (For the record, Joh won the tournament.)

The USGA has begun posting results from U.S. Open local qualifying locations around the country. There are still many more to go.

Every year I'm surprised to see certain names. Most of the guys who get through local qualifiers are, on a national scale, no-names. But a few are (or perhaps were at one time) easily recognizable.

So far, qualiifers include, for example, Hunter Haas. And Roger Tambellini and Dick Mast. And Kevin Streelman and Garrett Willis. And D.A. Points.

And "Big Break" bad guy Anthony Rodriguez. But not Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo, who failed to advance out of the Dallas qualifier. (Don't cry for Tony, he went home to Jessica Simpson. And as long as she's not singing, that's a pretty good deal.)

I'll be posting a few updates over the next week or so as more local qualifiers take place. But you can keep track of scoring on the USGA Web site.

There's a good example of a small but significant problem on the LPGA Tour this week: Their scheduling needs some improvement.

Once again, one of the biggest LPGA Tour events is drawn against of the most important PGA Tour events. The Michelob Ultra Open is going up against The Players Championship.

Will the Ultra get any play on sports highlight shows and in newspapers? Not much.

We were talking a couple days ago about things the LPGA Tour could do to spur growth. One is to schedule better. The PGA Tour always has its schedule set first. The LPGA should react to that and make sure its marquee tournaments aren't completely overwhelmed by the competing PGA Tour tournament. (They'll almost always be overshadowed, but they don't necessarily have to be overwhelmed.)

Another example is the continuing problem of having only one tournament in between the LPGA Championship and the U.S. Women's Open. In year's past, there's only been one week. At least this year there is an off week, then the Wegmans. Two weeks.

Tweaking the schedule won't cause the ratings to surge, but it will be a small step in the right direction.

As for the Michelob Ultra today: Michelle Wie shot 75, very close to the bottom. Five bogeys, one birdie, so at least no blow-up holes. And she averaged 284 on her measured drives. Hard to know what (if anything) it means without seeing it, though. Does 75 represent the level of her play? Or, like at the Fields, was she scoring much better than she looked?

But more importantly: Annika Sorenstam and Lorena Ochoa started hot, Annika with 64 and Lorena with 65. Perhaps this is the week we'll be treated to a showdown. Given the LPGA's luck, it probably will be the week - the week of The Players Championship, when hardly anyone will notice.

Well, not fired really, but kicked out of her anchor chair and sent back to the studio.

Several players told Finchem that they do not think she does a very good job, and asked the commissioner whether there was anything he could do about it.

Finchem, a skilled lawyer/politician, diplomatically told the players that while he consults with the network regularly, he does not have any direct say in whom it uses on the air.

He pointed out that Tilghman is always co-operative with the tour, happy to read its promotional blurbs, and that Thursday-Friday ratings on The Golf Channel are higher than they used to be on ESPN.

The players who voiced their opinions were not necessarily upset with anything specific that Tilghman has said in her 16 months in the job, including the famous remark in January that players wanting to beat Tiger Woods should "lynch him in a back alley."

Rather, they seem to think that she does not have the gravitas or broadcasting expertise to elevate a telecast in the way that Jim Nantz, for example, does on CBS.

Great - they want an anchor more like Nantz. No surprise, given that Nantz's broadcasting style is to make people think golf - and by extension, golfers - is as important breathing. Nantz calls golf as if he were calling the Birth of Democracy.

The players' complaint wasn't with anything specific Tilghman said-including a certain comment from earlier this year vis-à-vis Tiger Woods and Southern justice-but with her perceived inability to manufacture drama out of thin air, as any good golf announcer should be able to do on a moment's notice.

Finchem pointed out that the PGA Tour doesn't actually control the Golf Channel, but simply the fact that this story leaked out of the players' meetings means there'll likely be action. Expect Kelly to start talking in a much lower register and using words like "majestic" to describe routine chip shots.

I'm not a fan of Tilghman's work in the anchor's chair. But I don't want her (or anyone else) to be more like Nantz.If she were more like Dan Hicks, though, that'd be just fine.

Speaking of Pete Dye, he's been elected to the World Golf Hall of Fame in the "Lifetime Achievement" category.

I don't know off the top of my head how many course architects are in the Hall of Fame. But as long as any architects are going in, then Pete Dye most definitely deserves to be one of them.

Even if some of his favorite touches - railroad ties banking water hazards, for example - now seem a tad cliche because so many other architects copied him. And even if a rash of copycats have created a lot of golf courses that are probably too difficult for their audience (weekend hackers) because they were trying to be Dye-abolical.

Many of the most memorable courses of the past 50 years were designed by Dye, and he's still going strong at age 82.

And from an old-school, golf-course-architecture standpoint, maybe it is. Woods explained his statement by saying that he had no problem with island greens, he just felt this one comes too late in the round. (Giving a single hole - a single shot, really - too much emphasis.)

That hole wasn't the first island green, and architects have gone a little island green-crazy since then (there's even one tour course - although I'm drawing a blank at the moment on which tour and which course) that finishes with two island greens in a row.

And we should all blame - or thank - Pete Dye's wife Alice, who is the one who actually suggested an island green. And keep an eye on Woods' golf course designs to see if he incorporates any island greens.

But some gimmicks are better than others. And even if the 17th hole at TPC Sawgrass really is "gimmicky," then - in this case, anyway - I'm all in favor of gimmicks.

Tiger isn't playing this week. And sad to say, but that usually causes my interest level in a tournament to go down. (I know, I know, but it does.)

But Tiger or no Tiger, I eagerly await Live@17 on pgatour.com, and watching The Players Championship coverage on the Golf Channel and NBC. And especially watching how the leaders handle that fourth-round tee shot on that gimmicky No. 17.

Has anyone read or heard anything more recent on the state of the LPGA's negotiations with U.S. tv networks than Jon Snow's piece in Sports Business Journal? Has anyone been tracking the LPGA's ratings this season in a more systematic way than Steve DiMeglio in USAToday?

I ask because I'm wondering if there's still a Michelle Wie effect when it comes to tv ratings and whether Lorena Ochoa's quest for 5 wins in 5 straight starts has changed the kinds of equations Brandon Tucker's commentariat were making earlier this season. My position has always been that the LPGA doesn't need Michelle Wie to take off in the same way women's tennis did in the Williams sisters era, but I'm willing to follow the evidence on this.

I'm also wondering if we're in a "best of times/worst of times" moment in LPGA history. In his U.S. Women's Open preview, Mark Craig of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune offers some crucial historical perspective on LPGA purses, sponsorships, endorsements, and tv deals. Ron Sirak in this older piece. For a different kind of historical perspective, check out this golden oldie from Hound Dog! But he has also been sounding warning bells about the future of various LPGA events. Mulligan Stu has been following this, of course, in several key posts--and I've recently responded. For an optimistic take on the LPGA's future, see Ron Kroichick's piece in the San Francisco Chronicle. I've been optimistic so long, though, I'm beginning to lose patience. What say ye, golfosphere?

In his weekly golf notebook for the Associated Press, Doug Ferguson tells the story of the LPGA golfers who were having a putting contest on the practice green and had to ask another player's caddie to step out of their line. He obliged. Afterward, the players went to the commish and complained about crowded conditions on the practice green. So the LPGA now has a rule the prohibits caddies from being on the practice green and chipping areas between 8 a.m.-4 p.m. No helping their players. Too crowded.

"You know what? It's women," she said when asked for a comment. "If you just put that down, everyone will know what you mean. Just capitalize 'women' and you don't need to explain anything else."

Remember that "Ultimate Game" tournament that Cristie Kerr entered with her longtime coach Jim McLean? Fifty-thousand-dollar buy-in, $1 million payout to the winning team.

It was the same tournament that last year featured the professional debuts of the Finau brothers (ages 16 and 17 at the time). This year it was supposed to be a 2-person team tournament, originally scheduled for March 6-11, then rescheduled for April 29-May 4.

Hey, that was last weekend wasn't it? So it should have aired on the Golf Channel. But ... it didn't air on the Golf Channel.

It wasn't played at all. And you didn't even notice, did you? Neither did I. I suppose Cristie Kerr didn't either, since she was playing in Tulsa.

But as of April 22 only 24 teams had paid in full, with another 24 partially paid up.

The owners of the event, Steve Bartkowski (yes, that one) and Joe Thomas (a lawyer), attempted to reduce the field to 48 teams, but their partners balked. What went wrong? "In our communication with them, most teams said they were forced to withdraw largely due to an inability to secure funding in a struggling economy," Bartkowski and Thomas said in a release, later adding that they hope to bring the event back next year.

PGA Tour
The Players Championship
TPC Sawgrass (Stadium Course), Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.
Thursday-Friday, Golf Channel; Saturday-Sunday, NBC

European Tour
Italian Open
Castello di Tolcinasco Golf & Country Club, Milan, Italy

Nationwide Tour
Fort Smith Classic
Hardscrabble Country Club, Fort Smith, Ark.

Ladies European Tour
Turkish Open
National Golf Club, Belek, Antalya, Turkey

Here's a compilation of "beer shower" celebrations from recent Michelob Ultra Opens:

Se Ri Pak drinking from the trophy, and Karrie Webb enjoy a swig, are the best. Suzann Pettersen looks completely uninterested.

Michelob, of course, would love for this to develop into a tradition the likes of the pond dive at the Kraft Nabisco. But I wonder how this one got started? I don't recall the first incidence of the Michelob Ultra Open winner being doused with beer. Was it a spontaneous thing? Or mere product placement?

Did Michelob-sponsored Lori Kane rush out on the 18th green to douse Se Ri because she and Pak are close friends, or because Michelob handed her a beer and said, "OK, Lori, earn your money"?

This is product placement, pure and simple. Nothing wrong with that. It's Michelob's tournament, after all. Whether it catches on and grows beyond mere product placement requires more reactions like those of Pak and Webb. Unbridled enthusiasm, as Elaine Benes would say.


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