It was a record setting blockbuster deal when Rory McIlroy signed on with the Swoosh.  This will undoubtedly begin an ongoing tandem campaign with the other Nike show pony Mr. Eldrick Woods.  Up to now the details on the trail to forging his relationship with Nike have been sketchy but you can read in the attached SI article by Alan Shipnuck how Rory and his agent carefully navigated the waters before landing  him on this island oasis.

What may surprise you is how motivated and engaged Rory was in this process.  He takes the presentation of his image very seriously and found that Nike represented the right fit of young and cool he was after.  As Rory said in his typical self-deprecating fashion, “It always seemed  like a food fit to me.  Golf needs a younger and more athletic image and Nike has always had that.  I’m young enough.  I’m not sure I’m athletic enough.  But I’ll try”.

His agent Conor Ridge of Horizon Sports Management was determined to eliminate the clutter of logos that made Rory appear on TV broadcasts as “golf’s version of a NASCAR ride”.  Through a protracted series of agreements to meet Rory’s goal of a cleaner, more simple image presentation, Ridge has realigned Rory’s endorsements and delimited the ad real estate on Rory clothing.

The most interesting aspect of this article is Shipnuck’s description of the evolution of Rory’s relationship with the Nike equipment side.  Rory said he was “relieved to discover that among the club tweakers there were no spiky-haired hipsters or mad scientists…..I was blown away by the craftsmanship and attention to detail”.

In the end Nike’s craftsmen found Rory a quick study who, as the ultimate feel player, is apt to embrace changes that intrigue him and take the attitude of “let’s try it and see what happens”.  This is a far stretch from the conservative and controlling approach of the second stud in the barn.

The jury is out on how a drastic equipment change may affect Rory’s career trajectory but he does not seem all that concerned about it.  He says, “I don’t over think things.  I’m not going to get overwhelmed by changing my equipment.”  His father Gerry who knows him better than anyone has said , “Rory could win a major playing with a hockey stick and an orange.”  Maybe Rickey Fowler should take note of that.

Tiger has gracefully accepted the fact that an ad relationship with Rory allows Nike to bring him back from his wilderness journey that started after that fateful incident at Isleworth in 2009.  The first advertisement of the series (click here to view the first ad) has just the right amount of edginess and personality interest to set the table for the many more sequels that are cooking in The Oven.

(Click here to read Alan Shipnuck’s article on Rory’s Nike Deal)

Alan Shipnuck

SI/Golf.com

January, 2013

Once again the USGA is on top over everything relevant to the preservation of the integrity of the game.  Bypassing lesser concerns about anchored putting, compliant ball aerodynamics, and nuclear ball speed off driver club faces, the USGA has introduced, after two years of exhaustive internal research and development, a new and improved version of the Stimpmeter.

The latest cutting edge version with the USGA logo (USGA/Jonathan Kolbe)

I for one will sleep better at night knowing that the powers that be have addressed this pressing problem.  You can read about this exciting development in John Paul Newport’s Wall Street Journal article called “Ta-Da! Stimpmeter Makeover”.

The original was a wooden version introduced in 1935 by Massachusett’s amateur champion Edward Stimpson in response to concerns over the unfair green speeds at the U.S. Open at Oakmont that year.  Separately, there is an unsubstantiated rumor that Mrs. Stimpson volunteered in a Depression soup kitchen and was looking for a better stirring implement for getting the lumps out of the morning oatmeal.

It was not until 1976  that Frank Thomas of the U.S.G.A. made the next big move changing the Stimpmeter from wood to aluminum and it became the standard device for measuring green speeds at U.S. Opens starting that year in Atlanta.  Within two years green superintendents around the country had adopted it for tweaking their putting surfaces and it has become a critical tool for bragging rights at high-end private facilities all over the country.

Fast forward another 34 years and the USGA brain trust correctly decided that enough was enough and made two critical improvements to sustain it’s relevance for generations to come.  First, they updated the color from drab green to a “dazzling USGA blue”.  Second, they added a second “starting hole” to accommodate measurements on greens that don’t have the required 10-12 foot flat run out for the original device.  This is a condition on many older severely undulating greens and the steep and segmented greens that are often the gift of wrath from designers today.

As a course superintendent you can order one of these from the USGA for only $110 (or 3 easy payments of $36.66).  If you act now the USGA will generously double your order sending you a second Stimpmeter for the back nine ABSOLUTELY FREE (just pay shipping and handling for the second device).

For a limited time, as an additional bonus, you will also get a 6 oz can of their “Green Renew” biodegradable green paint that cures pesky brown spots on closely mowed greens in seconds.  It comes in three different shades for Bent, Poa Annua, and Tifeagle Bermuda putting surfaces (please specify preferred color with order).

For those who share the “innate nerdiness” of USGA staff and you can review their instructional video below on the proper use of a Stimpmeter.  WARNING: This video is rated PG and is not appropriate for those without fossilized frontal lobes.

(Click here to see the Official USGA Training Video on Proper Use of the new Stimpmeter)

I only hope that the USGA has, in keeping with the trend of responsible and patriotic vendors, insisted that the current models are being “assembled in the U.S.A.”

(Click here to read John Paul Newport’s WSJ article “Ta-Da! Stimpmeter Makeover”)

John Paul Newport

The Wall Street Journal

January, 2013

The three total makeovers of his golf swing that Tiger Woods, the greatest player of his generation, has done over the last two decades have defied logic to all in the know about the professional game.  Yet, as you can read in this article by Scott Eden in ESPN The Magazine called “Stroke of Madness”, the athleticism that Tiger was born with has allowed him to venture where few golfers have gone before.  The motivation for this madness, according to Tiger, is “only two players have ever truly owned their swings: Moe Norman and Ben Hogan.  I want to own mine”.

Blame the flaw on Earl at age 3 Tiger fights getting “stuck” (Mike Douglas Show 1978)

In 1997 after having won three U.S. Amateurs, five tour events (including a major), and being ranked #2 in the world, Tiger and Butch Harmon set about tearing down and rebuilding his golf swing to eliminate a flaw, getting stuck on the downswing, that Tiger had successfully managed from his earliest days of swinging a golf club.  In 1999 he claimed to his teacher that he “got it” and went on a tear of professional wins, including four majors in a row, that stunned the golfing world and vindicated his decision to mess with his swing. Butch, when asked at this point if there was anything Tiger should change replied, “The only thing I’d change right now if I were Tiger is the route I took to the bank”.

Yet in 2004 Tiger’s perfectionist mind was unsettled again in search of a motivating challenge and true ownership of his swing.  Version 3.0 was fashioned over the next five years under the watchful eye of Hank Haney as he rounded and flattened his swing, laying the club off at the top in an effort to improve his driving accuracy and eliminate his age old problem of getting stuck on the downswing.  Another impressive run of victories followed, and since the Haney swing change, he had won 31 more tour events, including 6 more majors and held the #1 spot on the World Golf Rankings for what seemed like an eternity.

By 2010 inject a knee reconstruction and incalculable mental baggage from the fallout of the fire hydrant incident in 2009 and Tiger was playing the worst golf of his professional career and searching once again for a swing makeover to take him back to the pinnacle of the professional game.  The unlikely choice to help him get there was the heady Canadian instructor Sean Foley, who preached a wonky version of the Stack & Tilt method.  This may have been the most radical change yet for Tiger and it clearly brought about the most vitriolic criticism.  Tiger was now preaching the value of TrackMan technology and it’s resultant data to corroborate improvements in spin rates, ball speeds, swing angles, and resultant trajectory from his latest technique.  A feel player most of his life he seemed to have traveled to the dark side accepting these “numbers” as the true metric of the state of his game.

The jury is still out on Version 4.0 as Tiger has made steady improvement the last two years but inconsistency in short iron distance control and putting in the big events have denied him from adding to his major victory totals in pursuit of the ultimate record, Jack’s 18 career major wins.

In this article, Eden concludes that Tiger’s quest is not over.  He says the flaw appeared for Tiger at age 3 in “the earliest footage of Tiger Woods’ earliest swing, a Zapruder film for golfing Nerds” from The Mike Douglas Show.  It still haunts him to this day.  Because of the obsessive nature of his perfectionist personality, Tiger seems destined to hounding a swing flaw he could “spend his entire career striving to erase”.

(Click to read Scott Eden’s “Stroke of Madness” from ESPN The Magazine)  

Scott Eden

ESPN The Magazine

February, 2013

———————————————————————————————

You can also view some great time phase photographs of Tiger’s swing development from 1992 to 2011 by viewing the moegolf posting called “Time Phase Tiger” based on a Golf Digest article from 2011.

(Click to see “Time Phase Tiger” from moegolf.net)

John Daly always makes his appearances with a bang…just look at the Loudmouth pants collection that is currently keeping him financially afloat.  It is difficult to recall that weekend in August of 1991 when a seriously unknown pro from Arkansas snuck under the radar to qualify for and win the PGA Championship by three shots at Pete Dye’s Crooked Stick in Carmel, Indiana.

As you can read in John Garrity’s Sports Illustrated article no one, absolutely no one, saw this coming.  Daly was the ninth alternate and did not know until Thursday morning that he would be playing in the spot of Nick Price (and borrowing the services of his caddie as well) who was skipping the event to await the birth of his first child.

What happened over four days-21 birdies, an eagle, and a three-shot winning total of 12-under-is the stuff of fairy tales.  With a backswing that insulted parallel and a resultant ball speed that seemed to defy slow motion cameras Daly played without a dimmer switch on a course that Nicklaus called “the most difficult he had every played”.

After an opening 69 on a course he had never seen, Daly defied all logic grabbing the lead Friday morning.  As Garrity says “From the moment his name went on the leader board, the crowds at Crooked Stick thought he was a sand castle and the golf course a rising tide”.  His tour ranking of 185th in driving accuracy was not a prescription for success at a major, even if it had no rough.

Saturday he made it clear that the grip-it and rip-it mantra had staying power if only for this weekend.  A three-under stretch starting on the fourth was the behavior of a major champion and his legions, and their enthusiasm, began to grow.

As is always the case a Cinderella needs a little luck on the way to the ball and Daly got an extremely favorable ruling when his caddie unintentionally rested the end of the flagstick behind the hole as Daly lined up his putt on 11 on Saturday.  This is a clear violation of 8-2b that says a player or caddie may not touch the surface of the green along the line of the putt.  The two-stroke penalty that would have resulted could have been disastrous.

Fortunately, after reviewing the tape,the officials “honored the spirit rather than the letter of the law….and avoided what would have been the most unpopular rules decision since the Roberto de Vicenzo scorecard fiasco at the 1968 Masters”.

The rest is history, including Big John’s over-the-head whirly-bird fist pump after hitting his final approach into 18 on Sunday.  It was quite a show and it is fun to relive it, even if for just a moment.

(Click to read John Garrity’s “Over Drive” from the SI Vault)

John Garrity

Sports Illustrated

August, 1991