Global Golf Post

Travis Invitational Is Fogarty’s Labor Of Love

John Steinbreder — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:24:16 +0000

GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK | Among elite amateurs, playing in the Walter J. Travis Invitational makes this week in mid-May one of the most special times of the year. For the chance to tee it up on the superb Garden City Golf Club track on which it is contested. For the opportunity to compete with top golfers from around the country. And for the privilege of visiting a place that is as historic as it is hospitable – and that delights in staging an event members say is all about “the spirit of friendship, the integrity of fair play and the keen sense of competition.” Fifty-one-year-old Long Island native Pat Fogarty likes Travis week as much as anyone. Only his affection for the event, which ranks among the top amateur invitationals in the country, goes well beyond playing. That’s because the Garden City member and married father of three also serves as tournament chairman. “Of course, I love competing in the Travis, and I always want to do well,” says Fogarty, a real-estate professional who works in New York City. “But for me, the week is also about taking good care of the contestants. This year, we have 120 players from 30 states, and we want them to feel like they are a part of Garden City, and to get to know us as they also get to know each other.” While Fogarty sits in the chairman’s chair, he is but one wheel of a welcome wagon that includes roughly 55 member volunteers, some of whom have been doing that job for decades, and about 40 staffers from Garden City, who cheerfully put in hundreds of hours of overtime for the tournament. “We want it to be The Masters of amateur golf,” he says. “We want to run it extremely well, and we always strive to do better.” Fogarty’s biggest job each year is assembling the field. “As a rule, we look for very good guys who also are good golfers and fit in nicely with the culture of the club and the tournament,” he says. Fogarty is a good example of that sort of golfer, someone with whom you would want to tee it, and also share a post-round beverage.

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Dawn-To-Dusk Golf Marathon For Charity

Lewine Mair — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:22:13 +0000

There are days when even the keenest of golfers starting with a double bogey might mutter to himself, “Only 17 holes to go.” For Graeme Dawson, Gary Davidson, Ally Love and Angus Watson it will be a matter of “Only 188 to go,” after they have played the first at Kingsbarns at 3.15 a.m. on 20th June. On what is a day away from the longest day of the year, the four are out to set records by playing all 11 of the courses in and around St Andrews between dawn and dusk to raise funds for Cancer Research UK, HCPT: The Pilgrimage Trust and the Scottish Disability Golf Partnership. Kingsbarns apart, the courses involved are the legendary Old Course, The Torrance, The Kittocks at the Fairmont St Andrews Resort, the Old Course Hotel’s Duke’s course, the New, the Jubilee, the Castle, the Eden, the Strathtyrum and Balgrove. In terms of distance, it adds up to 50 miles of golf and is an enhanced version of the 10-course challenge in which three of the above players participated as they raised £5,000 for charity in 2007. The Old Course is third on the agenda, with the Links Trust having given permission for the party to tee off at 6.20 in front of the daily procession. The format, from start to finish, is four-ball golf and the expectation is that the players will drop to a halt on the New Course at 11.30 p.m. Dawson’s special charity is the Scottish Disability Golf Partnership. Born with a left arm which stops just below the elbow, the 34-year-old Dawson could have played in the various one-arm championships in the UK and beyond. Instead, he has stuck with regular tournaments and has enough in the way of results to prove that he is a good golfer by any standards. Having started the game at 12, Dawson played to scratch during university days in St Andrews when he won the 2000 Scottish Universities’ championship, captained the St Andrews’ first team and played for both the Scottish and British Universities. Outside university golf, he has been the champion at his home club, Old Ranfurly Castle. Though the newspapers will often relay exciting news about the latest in bionic arms and hands, Dawson says he would not want one in any circumstances. “There’s nothing that I can’t do with one arm,” he explains, before noting that he can even tie his tie in the morning for his job in PR and marketing at the Fairmont Hotel. “It may take me longer than the average person but I’m better equipped than someone, say, who has been used to working with two arms and loses one in an accident.”

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Jennifer Johnson Says Hello

GGP Staff — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:19:51 +0000

MOBILE, ALABAMA | When Sunday began, Jennifer Johnson wasn’t even in the conversation. Not only had the third-year player never been in contention to win an LPGA Tour event, she had only finished in the top 10 once. So, remarkably, Johnson came figuratively out of nowhere to win the Mobile Bay LPGA Classic, her first victory. She shot matching 65s on the weekend to finish four rounds at the Magnolia Grove Crossings Course at 21-underpar 267, good for a one-stroke margin on Jessica Korda and Pornanong Phatlum. There was nothing in Johnson’s play that might have predicted this victory. This was her ninth start on Tour this year and her best finish was a tie for 13th at the Kraft Nabisco. She missed the cut in the Kingsmill Championship, her last start prior to her victory. After returning home from Virginia, Johnson went to see her teacher and put an old putter back in the bag, a Scotty Cameron model that her father calls “the spaceship.” “The putter has been the missing link,” said Johnson, 21. “When they go in, it really helps the score.” Johnson had only one top-10 finish in her career, with her best a tie for eighth at the 2011 Navistar LPGA Championship, also in Alabama.

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Bae Over The Moon At Nelson

GGP Staff — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:14:29 +0000

IRVING, TEXAS | No one ever said winning for the first time on the PGA Tour was easy. Sang-Moon Bae can vouch for that. After chasing Keegan Bradley since Thursday when the former PGA champion opened with a course-record 60, Bae ran him down on Sunday to win the Byron Nelson Championship by two strokes for his first PGA Tour victory. Bae did it on a windy Texas Sunday, building a four-stroke lead through eight holes in the final round then losing that lead before pulling away on the final three holes to beat Bradley at the TPC Four Seasons Resort, where Bradley won two years ago. “He’s a very, very good player,” said Bradley, who led after each of the first three rounds. Bae, 26, had 11 international victories but the closest he had come to winning on the PGA Tour came last year when he was part of a four-man playoff in the Transitions Championship won by Luke Donald. With winds gusting more than 20 mph most of the afternoon, Bae changed the storyline with four birdies in his first seven holes. Suddenly, Bradley found himself playing from behind and when the two players in the final pairing walked off the eighth green, Bae was four clear of the field. “The conditions were tough but I played really well the first eight holes,” Bae said. Just as quickly, the tournament flipped again when Bae dropped three shots to par at the ninth and 10th holes, bringing Bradley and Charl Schwartzel back into the chase. When Bradley made a birdie at the par-4 15th hole after ripping a 5-iron approach shot through the wind, he was tied again with Bae, who made a bogey there.

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Annika: The Moment Was All Hers

Ron Green Jr. — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:12:11 +0000

It has been 10 years now since Annika Sorenstam made us pause, compelled us to find a television set on a Thursday morning and made us collectively hold our breath as we watched her hit the most memorable shot of her unforgettable Hall of Fame career. Golf doesn’t have many remember-where-you-were moments but Annika’s opening tee shot at the 2003 Bank of America Colonial was one of those. Did you just flash back to where you were watching it? It was an event, a pop-culture moment that resonated beyond golf, touching moms and dads, sons and daughters. It angered some people, the kind of people who tend to look for reasons to be angry. For everyone else, it was a sweet curiosity, a chance to see the best female player ever test herself on the PGA Tour. Annika – she’s a first-name star – didn’t make the cut at the Colonial but she won hearts and hugs with a performance that blended her steely playing style with her soft personality. Deep in the heart of Texas, Annika was golf’s sweetheart. “I look at it as one of the highlights of my career,” she said by phone from the Orlando area, where she lives with husband Mike McGee and their two children. Annika has moved happily into her new life, running the Annika Academy, staying busy with other businesses and being with her family. A decade ago, she was in a different place, a 32-year old sitting atop the women’s golf world. She won 72 LPGA Tour events including 10 majors. Worldwide, she finished with 90 wins, more than any female in history and she did it with a game that was as reliable as a sunrise. She became the first LPGA player to shoot 59 in competition. In 2001 she won eight tournaments. In 2002, she won 11. And on May 22, 2003, Annika showed up at Colonial Country Club’s 10th tee wearing white pants, a black-and-white top and a black cap. She did her best to hide her nervousness but everyone there and thousands watching felt it. “It took a lot of courage to do that and to put herself out there on the limb like that and put herself out there in front of the world to critique, criticize, and anything in between. She did it, and she played fantastic,” said Tiger Woods, who played practice rounds with Annika in Orlando. Getting there was a journey in itself.

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Will The Ban Open A Can – Of Worms?

Mike Purkey — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:09:26 +0000

At least we’ll know and we can put all the not knowing and the comment period and the debates behind us and just finally, maybe even reluctantly, move on. Thank God. On Tuesday morning, USGA Executive Director Mike Davis and Peter Dawson, chief executive of the R&A, will likely announce that anchored putting strokes will no longer be allowed under the Rules of Golf, starting in 2016. If they announce something different than that, it will be the biggest upset in golf since Y.E. Yang beat Tiger Woods head-to-head at the 2009 PGA Championship. The proposed ban was announced on Nov. 28 of last year, which now seems like a couple of years ago. The comment period ended on Feb. 28 of this year, which now seems like a million years ago. The bottom line is this: the rules-makers are afraid that what was the stroke of last resort will become the stroke of choice unless something is done to stem the perceived tide of young people taking up belly putters and 14-year-old Guan Tianlang comes immediately to mind. Adam Scott winning The Masters with a broom-handle putter – in a playoff, no less – didn’t help the cause of the proponents of anchored putting. If the coffin hadn’t already been nailed shut, Scott’s victory at the very least draped the casket. Make no mistake: This is not about statistical advantage because there is none. None. It’s because Davis and Dawson, et al, don’t like the way it looks. Period. End of debate. And we might as well end it now because there has been no budging. Which now brings us the biggest question that will remain hanging out there for the next unspecified period of time: What is the PGA Tour going to do?

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Hex Chrome Shines On Tour

John Steinbreder — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:06:22 +0000

Callaway Golf has added to its line-up of premium golf balls with the new Hex Chrome+. Introduced this spring and put immediately into play on the PGA Tour by big-hitting Gary Woodland, it is a four-piece product designed to deliver maximum distance at mid- to high-clubhead speeds, especially off the driver, as it also offers Tour-level control and feel on shots around the greens. Says Dave Bartels, senior director of golf ball R&D at Callaway: “This is hands down the fastest Tour ball we’ve ever designed.” And he goes on to explain that the four-piece construction utilizes an extremely resilient core and dual mantle system to create more ball speed off shots over a wide range of clubs and swing speeds without generating excessive spin, leading to longer distance.

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RocketBallz Stage 2 Improves On Distance

John Steinbreder — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:04:39 +0000

As a rule, TaylorMade Golf does not rest on the laurels of a successful product launch. So, it should not be at all surprising to those who know the company that it has quickly followed the 2012 release of its RocketBallz fairway metal with this year’s introduction of what its engineers describe as a new and improved version of that club, dubbed RocketBallz Stage 2. At the same time, the Carlsbad, Calif., manufacturer has brought out a line of Stage 2 Rescue clubs that employ similar technology. “Our team continues to push the innovation envelope in the fairway wood and hybrid categories,” says Todd Beach, vice president of metalwood R&D at TaylorMade. “Rocket- Ballz represented a distance breakthrough,
but we knew we could make improvements.” One of those improvements with both the metal-woods and hybrids, he says, comes in the form of a thinner and faster-flexing clubface, thanks to the utilization of a high-strength, lightweight TaylorMade RocketSteel supplied by Carpenter.

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Ken Venturi, May 15, 1931 – May 17, 2013

Mike Purkey — Sat, 18 May 2013 00:13:49 +0000

Ken Venturi at the Presidents Cup. (Aubrey Washington, Action Images)

He was part of the soundtrack of many of our golf lives. More than one lasting Masters moment had Ken Venturi’s signature on it. For 35 years he sat in the tower for CBS alongside the likes of Jack Whitaker, Pat Summerall and Jim Nantz.

And now, he’s gone. Venturi died on Friday at age 82 after an extended illness. He had been inducted just two weeks ago into the World Golf Hall of Fame, but couldn’t attend the ceremony because he was hospitalized. Many hoped for a recovery so that he could give his speech at next year’s gala.

Venturi retired from CBS in 2002, after holding a job that was nothing short of remarkable. As a young man, he had suffered from a speech impediment; he stuttered. But he overcame that obstacle to become one of golf broadcasting’s legends.

That wasn’t all he overcame. He endured triple-digit heat to win the 1964 U.S. Open at Congressional; it was one of the most enduring U.S. Open victories of all time. Venturi won a total of 14 PGA Tour events in his career, retiring from competition in 1967.

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McIlroy To Start Own Management Group

Mike Purkey — Fri, 17 May 2013 18:36:24 +0000

Rory tweeted this picture of he and Roger Federer together in August 2012. (Rory McIlroy, Who Say)

A dinner with tennis great Roger Federer in Brazil laid the groundwork for Rory McIlroy to reach the conclusion that he wants to be the master of his own destiny. He got some advice from Federer about how to manage his affairs on and off the big sports stage, and as a result McIlroy is leaving his second sports management group and will be setting out on his own.

McIlroy is leaving Horizon Sports Management, who signed him away from Chubby Chandler’s International Sports Management in 2011. He had been with ISM since he turned pro in 2007.

The Irish Independent first reported this story and rumors had been flying about at last week’s Players Championship, although McIlroy persistently denied the reports. McIlroy is said to be forming his own company, made up of friends and family members, and to include at least one current member of Horizon, not Conor Ridge, who founded the company.

Ridge and Horizon negotiated several deals for McIlroy, including the Nike equipment contract, said to be for as much as $20 million a year for six years.

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