The European Tour excels again - Crazy Video Part Deux

Another great video from the boys at Wentworth! How to promote golf in the 21st century - Awesome!

The 2010 Majors - A Strange Year

It was a strange year for the majors – after Phil at Augusta who would have predicted Oosty 2, GMac and Kaymer as winners, especially around Pebble, St. Andrews and Whistling Straits. The year of “Tiger’s golf courses” turned out to be a wash out for him, but bearing in mind what happened at Thanksgiving 2009, I actually thought he played reasonably well. Watch out in 2011, because Tiger will be back. The players are all saying they are no longer intimidated by him – just wait ‘til he starts winning again and watch the “I” word slip back into their lexicon. Tiger is the most complete player ever to play the game and his swing (whilst it will never regain the fluidity of 2000) is on the way back.

Sadly, next years venues are not in the same league as this year.

Augusta – same as ever – say no more! No better place to play golf.

Congressional is the site of the US Open and it is an old style brute with punishing rough and narrow fairways. Pete Dye has once again changed the greens, though they are no better than they were the last time he re-did the greens – did we also mention it’s no fun to play!

Sandwich is my least favorite Open Championship venue. I have played it a half dozen times and nothing really stands out – given the choice I would play Rye or Royal Cinque Ports just down the road.
Atlanta Athletic Club is the venue for the PGA Championship (please don’t EVER call it Glory’s Last Shot!). Great club, not so great golf course (actually 2 courses). The last time a major was played there it was won by David Toms on the Highland Course who edged out Phil, by a shot. Toms’ cause was helped by a hole in one in the third round. 

Another Captain Snore! What no Freddie?

It looks like the PGA of America has outdone themselves with another snore inducing US Ryder Cup captain. This time it looks like Davis Love 3 will take over the reins from Corey Pavin in the unquotable department. What happened to Fred Couples and some charisma?

Let's hope that, at least, the golf lives up to the 2010 edition - the role of the captain is overblown anyway!

5 Golf Gifts for Christmas - time to go online

With only two weeks to go until Christmas, if you are like me you still have to get to the store to buy any presents. Actually, I have given up on bricks and mortar retail and I’m strictly online now and with free shipping and, in many cases, no sales tax, what’s not to love. Here are my last minute suggestions for real golfers.

1. Tin Cup Golf Ball Marking Tool

One of the coolest products to hit the market in 2010 and the best way to personalize your golf ball. Through December 31st if you but two Tin Cups they are offering free shipping with the code FREESTC, which can be used at checkout. This saves you $5.95. There are more than 50 designs to choose from.

2. Rolex Top 1000 Book

For the first time ever here is the ultimate guide to the best golf courses in the world. I have this book and with a course review, local hotels and maps of each course it really is unique. On Amazon, the book qualifies for free shipping.  At $34.95, it sounds expensive, but trust me, it isn’t and this book should be on every travelling golfers shelf.

3. Josh Smith Golf Landscapes

Our friend Josh paints beautiful golf landscapes and right now a number of his prints are on sale on his website, www.joshsmithart.com. His picture of the iconic 7th at Pebble Beach, as it was in 1929, is a classic. Any golfer will be thrilled to have this image in their living room or den.

4. Annika's Wine Club

Annika Sorenstam is not only one of the greatest of all time, she is also a terrific businesswoman and has a knack for creating associations with great brands. One of these is the world renowned Wente Vineyards. Wente and Annika have produced wines worthy as perfect gifts for the oenophile in your life. The Chardonnay and Syrah have won several awards and great numbers from Wine Spectator. The Club is a great way for you to be among the first to get your hands on these special limited availability wines - we have tried both and highly recommend them.

5. Callaway Golf Pre-Owned

Don't get me wrong, I love getting new clubs as much as any golfer. But, I also like getting a deal and if you haven't discovered www.callawaygolfpreowned.com, then set aside an hour and wander around the online store which has almost all the current woods, irons, putters and accessories, but at much cheaper prices. I'm guessing the clubs are either returns or trade ins and vary from "average" condition to "like new". I love the 2006 Callaway Hot 3 wood and I managed to pick up two of them for $120 each in perfect condition. It's my go to club and if you find a club you love you need at least one back up - the Pro's have even more than that (but that's a little easier as they don't pay for them). Anyway check it out for great gift ideas at terrific prices.

Fortune Brands confirms Titleist spin off

Fortune Brands confirmed this morning that they are breaking the company into three. It'll be fun to watch the scramble for Titleist/Cameron/Footjoy/Vokey. We speculated in a recent post about who will pay for these world brands and whilst the Tour is in hiatus for a few weeks it will keep golf on our minds.

You can read the release here.

Q School - The Six Day Grind

For those who didn't keep their Tour Card by earning a spot in the top 125 the next six days have the potential to be like water torture! 108 holes of strokeplay golf is alot of golf, even without the pressure of Q School. It's actually not that bad for the majority of the field (however the Golf Channel likes to paint it!) as the most of them have somewhere to play next year, even if it is on the secondary Nationwide Tour. Players who finished 126-150 on the PGA Tour in 2010 still get to play 15-18 events on Tour and every player who makes the four round cut gets their Nationwide card.

I have attended Q School as a player agent twice and the pressure and tension is definitely in the air, especially on the final day (both times my player made it through) but it's really not the doom and gloom everyone talks about.

You would think it would be a great opportunity for the Tour to test a great golf course under tournament conditions - sadly no. The golf courses at Orange County National are fine. Dreadful word "fine" isn't it. Let's just say the courses are on a par with their logo above...nuff said!

Titleist Going Solo?

Rumors run amok that pressure from certain key investors in Fortune Brands is going to force the NYSE quoted company to split their business into several parts. Fortune owns many great brands like housewares maker, Moen, liquor brands like Jim Beam and also the number one golf revenue generator, Acushnet. The brands within Acushnet are Titleist, Pinnacle, Scotty Cameron, Vokey Wedges and Footjoy shoes.

As an investor I'm all for unlocking value in a share price. The question is ...Who will buy Acushnet?

The suitors would naturally include industry giants, Callaway, Nike and TMAG. Let's have a brief look at these and see if there is a fit.

Firstly Callaway. I don't see this one. As much as Callaway would like to buy their nemesis, their market capitalization of $450M isn't going to support an acquisition of Titleist's reported $1B plus sales.

Nike and Titleist together. In England, we like to say "like chalk and cheese". In America you say "oil and water".  It means the same thing! The culture clash would keep HR busy for an eternity. Not going to happen.

TMaG (TaylorMade adidasGolf) is another potential candidate who would be anxious to get their hands on Titleist's hugely profitable golf ball business. They certainly have the money as the German giant, adidas generates revenues that the golf business can only dream about. As well as facing US monopoly issues, rather like Nike I just don't see the cultural fit.

The natural suitor comes from the East - Japan, Chaina, Taiwan, Korea. They have the money, especially with the exchange rate the way it is and they like "blue chip" brands like Acushnet. The company throws off a good amount of cash and it would be a great story for a Far Eastern company to own this prestigious US brand.

It's all conjecture at this time but good fun to speculate. Titleist and Footjoy under the Acushnet banner remain one of the great legacy brands of the game of golf and a company with deep(ish) pockets will pay for the privilege of adding it to their assets.

Scotty Cameron - The Money Machine

Every couple of months, more during the season, I get an email from Scotty Cameron. Not actually from Scotty to me personally. I'm one of presumably hundreds, maybe thousands who are members of the Scotty Cameron Fan Club. We pay for the privilege - $100 or so for an annual membership to Club Cameron. Why do I do this? Well, I firstly like Scotty and what he does with putters and secondly I am a very interested observer in the business practice that essentially asks me to pay a fee to look at the merchandise. Great concept! Last time I looked Louis Vuitton, Hermes, heck, even Harry Winston on Madison Avenue let me walk into their shop for free.

Scotty has achieved the seemingly impossible. Make people join a club, put up the merchandise online and let the feeding frenzy begin. Members of the club, (who have 48 hour exclusive access) are literally fighting one another electronically to buy something with a Scotty dog embroidered into it. Amazing concept. Amazing execution.

Just for fun let's do some back of the envelope math. Let's say scottycameron.com launches a new headcover for $72 plus shipping plus tax. Well, he buys these from AM & E for, say $20, ok $25. He sells 2010, yes TWO THOUSAND AND TEN (the same number as the year) in one day! The gross for the day is a cool $144,720 (excluding the additional mark up on shipping). Net for the day, probably around $95,000. And, and it's a big AND, he does this 10 times a year. That's a Million Bucks a year, net from headcovers. That's not including golf bags, hats, even ladies tote bags and those pesky membership fees. Oh yes, he also sells putters and they are not cheap.

Today's offerings were sold out in a matter of hours and often with leather headcovers in limited quantities they sell out in minutes...minutes! The man is a marketing genius and no one has yet been able to replicate the model in the golf business. If  Titleist is indeed split up from Fortune Brands which is in the offing it will be interesting to see what happens to the money making putter maker.

10 Things We Love About The Game Of Golf (Part 2 - The Last 5)

Continuing with our Top 10 here are numbers 6 - 10.

6. The Masters Tournament. For me it is the Number 1 Major. Played each year since 1934 at Augusta National nothing will ever signal the opening of the golf season like The Masters. There are many vocal critics of the golf course, saying it's over manicured, too green, too long, just too much! I have had the good fortune to play Augusta on a number of occasions and in my opinion it is still the best golf experience in the world, bar none.
And none of the critics harping on matters come week 2 of April. The par 3 tournament featuring past champions and then 4 days of top drawer golf follow around Bobby Jones' place. The green jacket, the awkward closing ceremony in Butler Cabin, the schmaltzy music, Jim Nantz's "Hello Friends", CBS's coverage featuring actual golf (rather than ED drug ads) and a truly great golf course. It's the Masters.

7. Golf Literature. There are some great books written about the game of golf. History books, instructional books, architecture books, psychology books, business books, biographies. (we'll follow up some time with our favorite golf book list) Golf lends itself well to be written about -  a simple, yet incredibly complex game played for centuries all around the world by all ages. My favorite golf book is Golf in the Kingdom by Michael Murphy - enough of a favorite to name the company after one of Murphy's characters, Seamus MacDuff.

8. Caddyshack. "Gunga la gunga", "so I've got that going for me, which is nice", "Spalding!", "looks good on you though", "pool and a pond...pond would be good for you"....stop, stop, we could go on for the rest of the blog just dropping memorable lines from the one, the only golf movie. Is there a real golfer out there who hasn't done their Bill Murray impression of caddying for the Dalai Lama? I even have Al Czervik's brazen entry with car horn blarring across the tee to Bushwood in his red Rolls Royce as my ringtone - you know the one!
It's golfs Citizen Kane and essential viewing every 6 months. "Be the ball Danny"!

9. Lists. Can you name the Top 10 tennis courts or soccer pitches in the world. No, not the stadium, the pitch! Doesn't really work does it. But with the game of golf arguments about the best hole, course, resort, public course, private course play out each and every day. The Golf Magazines are at the forefront with their Top 100 lists and the bi-annual architectural articles create endless comments and equal scorn. ( I should declare that I am on the panel for one of the Magazines, but am simply a lone voice amongst many)
The lists are great fun - simply that. They are a great way to list great courses on 2 pages and hopefully sell some magazines. No one course is really the winner, there are many great courses in the world and each of us has a preference for one over the other. There is no "Best Course in the World". The best is purely a personal preference. If pushed I would list Cypress Point at the top of my pile, but I'll also tell you I have 11 in my Top 10 confirming that I am tad confused. You can see my list at the bottom right hand side of the Blog.

10. The Icons. Arnie, Jack, Bobby, Lee, Ben, Byron, Tom, Sam, (yes, Tiger too!). Who did I miss?

ANNIKA's November E- News Published

We can hardly keep up with Annika as she circumnavigates the world. We published her E-News today and you can she just how busy she is here.