Yani Tseng gets it.  Much like her predecessors Annika and Lorena as the most dominant force in women’s golf and unlike previous #1’s on the male side of professional golf, Yani seems to get the fact that nurturing a relationship with her fan base and the media who serve as a conduit to them will serve to enhance her popularity and her fortunes as a result.

She has worked diligently on her English so she can handle those interviews and press conferences that come with winning TV golf tournaments.  To those of us who watch her on TV, she smiles all the time, even in the heat of competition, so you actually believe she is enjoying herself.  At the events, she connects with her fans and the tournament sponsors as if it were a pleasure and not just an occupational duty.

This past week she went above and beyond the call by hosting a dinner for the LPGA Communications staff and the national print and broadcast media folks.  This was not some staged sit down affair at a local Marriott but an intimate backyard barbeque at her Lake Nona home.   Holding court for the media in the rec room of your house is probably unprecedented but feeding and entertaining them is off the charts.  By the way, this was held the night before the season ending $1.5 million CME Group Titleholder’s event, a gathering of this year’s tournament winners.  First prize is $500K, so it is not like Yani did not have anything else on her mind at the time.

As the attached article by Beth Ann Baldy attests, those in attendance found out what they already know about Yani, she is engaging, self-deprecating, and just fun to be around.  She doesn’t take herself too seriously or put herself on a pedestal above her peers.

Angry Bird In Kraft-Nabisco 2010 Trophy (Beth Ann Baldy)

Witness this photo of her “Angry Bird in Kraft-Nabisco Still Life”-she was not pleased with letting a two-peat slip away, shooting 74 in the last round of this year’s Kraft-Nabisco.  She even regaled the crowd with an impromptu Harry Potter costume when the evening’s conversation got to theme parks.

In an age where dominant sports figures seem determined to build black box  walls around their personal lives, it is refreshing to see the number one player in lady’s golf so graciously connect with the people who help communicate her image to those of us who watch and support her success.  The LPGA is fortunate to have another grounded ambassador to lead their sport.

(Click here to read GolfWeek’s Article About Yani Tseng’s Party)

Beth Ann Baldy

November, 2011

There is so much conversation about how much Tiger’s swing has changed over the years and from these photos of his swing from 1992 to 2011 you can certainly see the evolution of the Tiger Swing for yourself.

(Circa 1992-The Original)

(2011 Sean Foley move)

Jaime Diaz interviewed all five of the instructors who have worked with Tiger over the last 20 years to put together an article for Golf Digest in April of 2011.   What may be most interesting here are the comments of the instructors as to how much of a challenge it was to work with Tiger.

Butch Harmon: “ I agreed with Tiger about the flaws, but I wanted to do it a piece at a time.  He wanted to do it all at once.”………”When he drove the ball in the fairway, he was nearly unbeatable.  That’s what I kept trying to drive into him.  But it didn’t take.”

Hank Haney:  “I think it’s fair to say that Butch had a better body to work with than I did. With me, he started looking more like a linebacker than a golfer.”…..”He was convinced that his golf swing was doing the damage to his knee.  Everything had to revolve around saving his knee.”

What is clear to me is that Tiger is obsessed with continuing to retool his swing to “get better”.  This may be his most significant flaw, his insistence on needing to remake what was already a juried piece of athletic art.

Tiger: “I’ve always taken risks to try to become a better golfer, and that’s one of the things that has gotten me this far”.

Take a look at this time phase presentation of Tiger’s swing and decide for yourself.

(Click here to see Golf Digest’s pictorial review of Tiger’s Swings)

Photos by J.D. Cuban and Stephen Szurlej

Jaime Diaz

April 2011

You can count me firmly in the camp of  “I really don’t care” when it comes to the burning question  “Will Eldrick ever get back to his dominant form?” So when it comes to another article about this I tend to simply to do the iPad swipe gesture and go to the next screen.

In this case though I think the opinion represented in the attached article has credibility because it is coming from Nick Faldo who, even though he can be somewhat pompous at times, usually takes the practical point of view on questions of controversy.  This interview with Sir Nick by Randall Mell, a writer for the Golf Channel, confirms what I have always thought about this question, it has more moving parts than a yoga teacher on muscle relaxers and there is no predicting if Tiger will ever land on his feet.

Faldo’s main point is that since all this went down, for Tiger there is really nothing in his life that is as it was before the incident.  He says, “Almost everything has changed, from the physical to the technical, the emotional side as well, everything seems different, so I think he’s still got a lot to contend with.”  Further he points out that for a star athlete to be dominant as Tiger was you need locked in concentration for practice and purpose.  In light such drastic changes, “quality of concentration goes. Your ability to totally engross yourself in practice for a day, that changes quite dramatically.”

On the question of whether he can win the additional five major’s it will take to surpass Jack’s record Nick says, “If this were just a golfing slump for two years . . . but it isn’t. He’s had a mental and emotional slump, and a physical one, too, because his body’s broken down, and a lot of that has to do with the pressures and the mind.”

The real factors like Tiger’s age, worn out body, questionable swing changes, tattered personal life, young family, and a major lack of self esteem just add more debris to the pile Tiger is sorting through. Add to this the fact that Earl sheltered him so much in his formative years that Tiger lacks many of the basic instincts for coping with adversity and taking personal accountability for fashioning a resolution for his problems.

I think what Faldo is correctly concluding is that it really becomes a more global question of whether Tiger can get control of his life again.  A semblance of his old golf game can only come after all that gets sorted it.

(Click here to read Randall Mell’s Faldo interview on Tiger Woods)

Randall Mell

November, 2011

The USGA and R & A announced last week the publication of new unified rules for 2012 to 2015. This is a result of an exhaustive four year process and review and modification of the 34 playing rules of golf by the two organizations.

Besides a couple of rules changes this is the first time there will be one uniform set of rules world wide-the only difference will be the language in which they are written. You might want to bone up on your Scottish.

Of the rules changes there are really only three that will likely affect you.

First, they changed the rule involving a ball moving once a player has addressed it. They added a key exception exonerating a player from penalty if their ball moves after address when it is known or virtually certain that the player did not cause the ball to move. Most obvious example we have seen is a wind gust moving the ball after address. The change in the rule is that the player does not have to take a penalty and return the ball to it’s original position. Now they simply wait until the ball stops moving and play it from the new location with no penalty. This should speed up play since many times players take extra time to be cautious when putting their ball on a windy day.

Second, if a ball is in a hazard (bunker, water hazard, etc) a player can now smooth sand or soil at any time in the hazard, including before playing from the hazard, provided it is for the sole purpose of caring for the course. They cannot do this if it will improve their lie, area of intended stance, or swing/line of play. This change should facilitate players raking other areas of the bunkers while waiting for their turn to play.

Third, a person is now deemed to have addressed their ball if they put their club in front or behind their ball, regardless of whether they have taken a stance. Since players have widely variant address processes this makes the determination of address more consistent.

They also exempted hole-in-one prizes from the stipulated prize limits for amateurs. This will make all those charitable organizations who have outings happy. Take dead aim!!

(Click here to see the full GolfWeek article on these rule changes)

October, 2011