Seven Days in Utopia
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Category Archives: Sports – Golf
Seve Ballesteros, R.I.P.
Seve Ballesteros – the most creative professional golfer of our time — finally lost his battle with brain cancer yesterday at the age of 54. Geoff Shackelford does his usual comprehensive job of cataloging the tributes (see also here) to the iconic Spaniard. Also, don’t miss this Jaime Diaz/Golf Digest interview of Ballesteros from last year as he reflected on his career and life.
With six Europeans (including the top three) in the current top 10 players in the World Golf Rankings, it’s fully evident that impact that Ballesteros had on the development of European golf. It is not a stretch to say that his influence on the European Tour was every bit as dramatic as that of Arnold Palmer on the PGA Tour.
Ballesteros’ style was quite similar to that of Phil Mickelson – a risk-taker who combined a sometimes out-of-control swing with a phenomenal short game to win five major championships (two Masters and three Open Championships). However, Ballesteros was somewhat different in that he burst on the scene as a teenager — he won the Dutch Open at the age of 19 and the led the European Order of Merit at the ages of 19-21. He was 22 when he won his first Open Championship in 1979 and he was just turning 23 when he was the first European to win The Masters. At the time, he was the youngest golfer to win the Masters.
Those championships propelled him to an extraordinary career, but his most compelling influence may have been in regard to the Ryder Cup. When that traditional match changed format in 1979 to become a competition between the U.S. and Europe rather than U.S. vs Great Britain and Ireland match that the Americans had lost just three times in over 50 years, Ballesteros grabbed the competition by the throat and wouldn’t let go. He played eight times in the Ryder Cup, losing only 12 times in 35 matches and won the 1997 match as the Euro captain. When the Euro team dropped him for the 1981 match because he had played mostly that season on the PGA Tour, the U.S. pummeled the Euros by nine points. The Euros didn’t make that mistake again.
In addition to being the most dashing and charismatic player of his time, Ballesteros was also quite witty. Few golfers will ever forget his classic response to a question of what happened when he four-putted one of Augusta National’s lightning-fast greens during the Masters: “I miss, I miss, I miss, I make.” Or his hilarious response to a question on how was it that he took an eight on one of Augusta National’s par 4’s: “I meesed a three-footer for a seven.”
But Ballesteros was different from Mickelson in that he lost his game in his early 30’s (although not his competitive fire – remember his captaincy of the 1997 Ryder Cup?). He was 34 when he last contended at a major championship and he made his last cut at the Open Championship at the age of 37. He made his last cut at the Masters when he was 38.
For those interested in the mechanics of the golf swing, Ballesteros’ decline is fascinating. As noted swing instructor Wayne DeFranceso reverently explains in this video analysis, Ballesteros won five major championships and 87 golf tournaments around the world with a swing that contained a fundamental defect. Through his extraordinary athletic ability and amazing short game, Ballesteros was able to compensate for the swing defect.
However, as he aged, Ballesteros’ swing fault became more pronounced as he dealt with chronic back pain and his short game ebbed a bit. The combination was too much for even Ballesteros to overcome, although he searched diligently for years in an attempt to revive his career. Unfortunately, he never made it to the man in Houston who specializes in golf swing reclamation projects and who just might have helped Ballesteros compete again at the top levels of the game.
The video below is a wonderful review of Ballesteros’ career and shows what made him such a compelling character.
Rest in peace, Seve. You will be missed.
So, what’s your favorite hole at Augusta National?
Taking stock of golf
The Houston golf community is abuzz today with Phil Mickelson’s dominating performance over the weekend in shooting 16 under par over his final two rounds to win the Shell Houston Open by 3 strokes. Not a bad way to warm up for the Masters this week, eh?
Also, The Woodlands’ Stacey Lewis, with whom I have hit golf balls at the local driving ranges over the years, broke through in a big way yesterday by winning her first LPGA tournament and first major, the Kraft Nabisco Championship.
Meanwhile, other aspects of the golf business aren’t quite so rosy. This NY Sunday Times article surveys the carnage of Tiger Woods’ first three ventures into the golf course design business, each of which is either failed or undergoing restructuring. Tiger still has not finished a golf course that his group has designed.
Of course, such problems are not solely of Woods’ design business. This San Antonio Express-News article reports on the multiple, successive restructurings of the long-distressed Boot Ranch project near Fredricksburg. And with only 105 members — and still charging a $100,000 membership fee and $12,000 in annual dues to a non-existent supply of prospective members – the developer suggests that this is a viable business model? What are they drinking?
Those interested in the golf business will sit back and put these untidy matters aside while enjoying the annual spectacle of the Masters this week. But it’s not lost on those who care about the future of golf that the success of the Masters and the Augusta National Golf Club bear little relationship to the state of the golf business elsewhere.
Clinging to obsolescent business models in the face of changing market conditions is a prescription for failure.
Attack of the Hawk
In light of this week’s Shell Houston Open, here is a video tribute to the best Texan golfer never to have won the tournament, Ben Hogan.
It’s SHO time!
The PGA Tour makes its annual trek to Houston this week for the Shell Houston Open at the Tournament Course at Redstone Golf Club. It’s always a fun event and well worth attending.
After a rocky divorce from The Woodlands and its popular TPC Course, as well as a difficult transition period in which most of the best PGA Tour players avoided the event, the 2010 tournament attracted the best field in the history of the event.
The 2011 tournament does not have quite a strong a field (four of the the top 10 players in the World Rankings are playing as opposed to six last year), but the field is as good as any of the non-major, non-World Golf Championship event on the Tour.
Phil Mickelson (6 in the World Rankings), Lee Westwood (2), Matt Kuchar (9) and Steve Stricker (10) are the highest ranking players participating this year, while defending SHO champ Anthony Kim (41), Ernie Els (13), Retief Goosen (18), Francesco Molinari (16), Padraig Harrington (36) , Hunter Mahan (19), Charl Schwartzel (26), and defending British Open champ Louis Oosthuizen (24) are other well-known Tour members in the field. In addition, local fan favorites and past SHO winners Fred Couples, Stuart Appleby and Robert Allenby (30) are playing again this year.
The Houston Open is one of the oldest events on the PGA Tour and the event has really got its mojo back after picking up the week-before-the-Masters-date on the Tour schedule five years ago. The first tournament was in 1922, which ties the event with the Texas Open as the third oldest non-major championship on the PGA Tour behind only only the Western Open (1899) and the Canadian Open (1904). This is the sixth Houston Open to be played on the Tournament Course at Redstone and the ninth event overall at Redstone, which hosted its first three Houston Opens on the club’s Jacobson-Hardy Course while the Tournament Course was being built.
This year’s strong field is further confirmation that the tournament’s move to the week-before-The Masters-date was the right one (32 participants in the SHO will play in the Masters the following weekend). The Houston Golf Association continues to do a fine job of promoting the tournament with Tour players by grooming the Tournament Course as much as possible to resemble the conditions that they will face next the following weekend at Augusta National. However, the course is a flat-land course that bears little resemblance to the hilly venues of Augusta, so that grooming only works to a limited extent.
Moreover, even with its superior conditioning, the Tournament Course is a not a favorite of either players or spectators. Although is has a decent variety of interesting holes, the routing of the course is an unmitigated disaster, with 16 of the holes separated by a long walk and a drainage ditch from the 1st and 18th holes, the driving range and the clubhouse. Unfortunately, there is not much the Houston Golf Association can do about that routing problem, so let’s just hope that the course’s superior conditioning and the SHO’s attractive tune-up date for The Masters keeps prompting the top players to overlook the course’s less appealing characteristics. Here are a few tips on watching the tournament at Redstone.
The following are a few of the back stories to follow during the tournament:
Houston will be well-represented in the field. Steve Elkington, and The Woodlands’ Jeff Maggert and Roland Thatcher lead the local veteran contingent, while two new faces – Johnattan Vegas and Bobby Gates, both from The Woodlands – are legitimate contenders for a top-10 finish this week. Vegas already won the Bob Hope Classic earlier this season, and both he and Gates already have two top-10 finishes each this season. Vegas and Gates are students of Kevin Kirk, who is the head pro at The Woodlands Golf Performance Center and another in Houston’s long legacy of outstanding golf instructors.
Although Mickelson and Tiger Woods still are ranked higher in the World Rankings, Matt Kuchar is currently the most consistent American player on the PGA Tour and arguably the most consistent player on the Tour over the past two years (although Bay Hill winner Martin Laird is coming on strong in that category). And, as with many things in golf, there is a Houston connection to Kuchar’s rise to the top.
Defending SHO champion Kim and British Open champion Oosthuizen are both coming back from injuries that cost them a portion of theie 2010 season. Although neither has contended yet in the 2011 season, both players are extraordinary talents who could burst into contention at any moment.
Scott Stallings, who contended at The Transitions Tournament a couple of weeks ago – is a top-20 Tour player in driving distance and maintains an interesting blog Chief Executive Golfer and likely will be passing along thoughts about his experience during the tournament.
Three of the top-10 drivers in terms of distance on the Tour will be playing, J.B. Holmes (4), Angle Cabrera (5) and Transitions Tournament champion Gary Woodland (9).
Although I’ve had my doubts that the HGA would be able to turnaround the SHO at Redstone, I’m happy to be wrong on that score. Houston has a rich golfing tradition and the HGA is a fine charitable organization. It’s going to be another great week at Redstone, so sit back and enjoy the SHO!
The Father of Golf Instruction
While the saga of Tiger Woods’ latest swing change plays out on the PGA Tour, Golf Digest’s Jaime Diaz interviews the oracle of golf swing instruction, England’s John Jacobs.
“The golf swing has only one purpose: to deliver the head of the club to the ball correctly, and to achieve such impact repeatedly.” With that statement, the 86 year-old Jacobs really hatched the profession of teaching the golf swing during the 1950’s and 60’s, and then served as a mentor to many of the best golf instructors of the past generation, including Houston’s Jim Hardy. The entire interview is essential reading for anyone interested in the golf swing, in particular, or teaching, in general. The following are just a few of Jacobs’ pearls of wisdom:
“Ben Hogan’s The Modern Fundamentals of Golf kept me in business. . . . The book should have been called How I Play Golf, and it would have been a great anti-hook book. But the title suggested it was good for everyone.”
“The feeling of wanting to take the club straight back, rather than on an arc, is intuitively human, but it’s the core of many faults. We think the longer we can make a straight line, the straighter the ball will go. But golf is a side-on game with the ball on the ground, so it’s the opposite.”
“The hardest thing about golf is that the natural correction is wrong. Slicers see the ball go to the right and aim farther left. It only makes their slices bigger.”
“Although it worked wonderfully for them, I think the team of Nick Faldo and David Leadbetter set a bad precedent for players becoming too dependent on instructors. I preferred that players work alone and ring me when they had a problem. . . . I would say Jack Nicklaus had the right formula with Jack Grout: Meet once a year, with occasional visits for emergencies.”
“When Tiger’s mind was clear, he was probably as good as Jack, but I wouldn’t say better. Jack was not as well equipped in his short game, so he had to be better internally, and that’s where Tiger is being tested now. Tiger hits more bad shots than Jack did, but he has saved them with his putter and short game. Going forward, he should be focused on hitting fewer bad shots and needing his putter less.”
Which, interestingly, appears to be what Woods is currently attempting to do.
The best current American golfer
Matt Kuchar has been the most consistent American player on the PGA Tour for over a year now. And, as explained earlier here, Houstonian Jim Hardy had a lot to do with Kuchar’s success. The videos below provide an interesting — although quite technical — analysis of Kuchar’s swing by Chris O’Connell, his swing coach. Some things to think about before you hit the links this weekend. Enjoy.
Euro Tour Fun
The Greatest Walk in Golf
The walk from the 15th green to the 16th tee of Cypress Point Golf Club on the Monterey Peninsula in Northern California.