The Common Golfer

Jesper Parnevik is suing golf clothier J. Lindberg for not paying for his use in the company’s marketing.  The lawsuit seeks $1.3 million.

For years, Parnevik was the primary player on tour for J. Lindberg and at one point was a shareholder in the company.  Stefan Engstrom with J. Lindberg said, “It is sad that it has been like this, but his contract was in 2008. It is not true that we have used him in our marketing. Jesper has been valuable for the company and built up the brand, but our primary name the last five years is a Colombian player Camilo Villegas.”

I have done absolutely no research on this subject, but I do vaguely recall having seen Parnevik’s face on some J. Lindberg material somewhere over the past year.  More importantly…what ever happened to Parnevik?  He was always one of my most favorite players to watcy, and roughly 10 years ago he was one of the most dominant players on tour!

After the remarkable performances recently of “older” past champions, the age rules for the British Open have been changed.  The rules change guarantees that Tom Watson, who finished runner-up this year, will be exempt for the next five years.  It also ensure we will see more of Greg Norman, who tied for third in 2008.

Today the Royal & Ancient, which governs golf outside of the United States, announced that former champions with a top ten finish will receive a five year exemption.  Prior to the rules change, Watson’s exemption as a past champion would have expired this year when he turned 60 years old.

”We have introduced this exemption as a direct response to seeing two of our great Open champions, both in their 50s, challenging to win our championship these last two years,” R&A chief executive Peter Dawson said. ”We rightly reduced the age of exemption for past champions from 65 to 60 two years ago and our intention was never to remove players still at the top of their game from competing in the Open.”

Unlike the defacement of the road hole, this is something Dawson has gotten right.  Actually, if it were up to me, past champions would have a lifetime exemption to come back and play the British Open.  But this will do, and I can’t wait to see Tom Watson come back next year and try to recapture the magic again!

It’s getting easier to analyze your own golf swing.  Casio’s new Exilim EX-FS10 camera is the first handheld to offer golf swing analysis.  The camera looks at your stance, posture, and swing angles.  It then provides feedback, as shown above.

A lot of the details (like price) aren’t out yet.  However, it comes with 9.1 megapixels, 1000 fps burst mode, 720P video recording and 3x optical zoom.  Would you use something like this at the driving range?  I’m wondering if there will be a way to use the camera by yourself, without having someone else photograph your swing.

This was too good to not pass along.  If your wife/girlfriend is wearing Triumph International Japan’s new “Nice Cup In Bra,” you can practice your putting as soon as she takes her clothes off!  Because that’s what everyone wants to do when their significant other gets naked…right?

The artificial grass top, when taken off, unrolls into a 1.5 meter putting mat.  If you make a putt in one of the two holes, built in speakers say “nice putt!”  The bra also includes pockets for storing extra balls and tees, as well as a detachable flag pin that doubles as a score pencil.

The bottom half has a detachable pink skirt with the words “Be Quiet” printed on the rear.  When removed, the extra-short skirt can be used as a flag to encourage onlookers to remain silent…which I’m sure they will be given that a woman has just taken off her skirt!

Triumph International Japan claims the lingerie was created in response to the growing popularity of golf among females in Japan, and is designed to appeal to busy working women looking for a unique and convenient way to practice their putt.  Seriously???  Only in Japan.

Perhaps Congress needs to stop focusing on gas-guzzling cars, and start looking at golfers.  Researchers with the Danish Golf Union have discovered it takes 100 to 1,000 years for a golf ball to decompose.  Those numbers are shocking, when you consider that at least 300 million golf balls are lost or abandoned each year in the United States!

Personally, I never lose golf balls…but the rest of you hackers are seriously hurting the environment.  The researchers found that during decomposition, the golf balls “dissolved” into hazardous heavy metals.  Dangerous levels of zinc were found in the synthetic rubber filling used in solid core golf balls.  Not a huge deal above ground…but when submerged under water, the zinc soaked in to the ground sediment and poisoned the surrounding plant life!

The research was started after a team found thousands of golf balls at the bottom of Loch Ness.

I think this is potentially bad news, but maybe not as bad as you think.  In most scenarios, on a golf course with man-made water hazards, this is a non-issue because golf balls are harvested by divers and resold – they don’t have a chance to decompose and poison the water.  But on courses with rivers, oceans, and bodies of water that divers can’t recover balls from, this could be potentially dangerous.

I’m not one to get my panties in a bunch about the need for everything to be “green.”  But there’s no denying the effect (small as it is) that golf balls could have in certain environments.  That said, one thing is for sure: if a company releases a “green” golf ball, plenty of people will buy it no matter what the cost!

What do you think?

The Oasis of the Seas, Royal Caribbean’s newest cruise ship, is officially the world’s largest ship and cost $1.5 billion to make.  It’s five times larger than the Titanic, and 40% larger than any other ship currently in use.  The best part?  It has an on-board golf course!

The ship is officially at sea, heading from Europe over to its home port of Fort Lauderdale, Florida and is set to sail with passengers in December.  The behemoth stands 20 stories tall, has 2,700 cabins and can accommodate 6,300 passengers and 2,100 crew members.

Even though it’s already at sea, there aren’t too many photographs or pictures available yet other than the side-profile of the ship.  However, the image below shows what the golf course will look like.  It will be a 9-hole, miniature golf course with real grass.  Pretty cool, because let’s face it…your vacation isn’t complete without putt-putt!

Some of the shots in this video I don’t even have enough creativity to conjure up!  My only question is…if you’re putting tons of hours of practice in for the “Trick Shot Championship,” what could you do with your real golf game if you practiced that instead?

Ryan Moore has finally woken up, and decided to sell out like everyone else on the PGA Tour.  Actually, I’m kidding – this is actually a smart move on his part.  I’m on record saying Ryan Moore was an idiot for being the only player on Tour without a sponsor, but that has officially changed.  Moore has signed a deal with Scratch Golf, which not only includes him using their equipment but also give him part ownership in the company.

He will play Scratch Golf wedges and irons, and will also sport the logo on his clothing and golf bag.  ”He feels we give him the best opportunity to succeed and we feel that he will help us get our name out there,” Ari Techner, president and CEO of Scratch Golf, said. “Having a spokesman out on the PGA Tour, carrying our bag and wearing our logo, being the face of the company, is really going to be important for us. We want to get our name out there. We don’t do any traditional advertising. I’m not sure there’s anyone else on tour we would have considered. It’s really a win-win for everybody.”

So I’m going to go ahead and ask it – am I the only one who’s never heard of Scratch Golf?  Moore is their first Tour staff professional, however Christie Kerr plays their wedges on the LPGA.  Details of the deal haven’t been finalized yet, but Moore seems to have gotten a potentially sweet deal!  Think of it this way…who else on Tour has equity ownership in the company that sponsors them?

Maybe Moore was on to something, by playing “hard to get” for 5 years.  For an equipment manufacturer I’ve never even heard of, I’m sure their long-term success if yet to be seen.  But if Scratch Golf becomes an established name on Tour, Moore could find himself earning much more than a standard sponsorship would rake in.

Wake up!  Scientific studies have shown that getting treatment for sleep apnea (which causes snoring and lack of sleep) can improve an affected golfers handicap by an average of 3 strokes.  Another finding in the study was that people were more apt to stick with their treatment, if they believed that there golf game would improve.

“Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) can lead to daytime sleepiness, fatigue, and cognitive impairment, all side effects which can negatively impact a person’s ability to golf to the best of one’s ability,” said researcher Dr. Marc L. Benton.  “As any golfer knows, when your ability to think clearly or make good decisions is compromised, the likelihood of playing your best is greatly diminished.  Through treatment with NPAP, we can improve many cognitive metrics, such as attention span, memory, decision-making abilities, and frustration management, which may, in turn, positively affect a person’s golf game.”

Oddly enough, the study actually found that “better” golfers with handicaps of 12 or less benefited the most from treatment.  Better golfers saw an average improvement of 9.2 to 6.3.

Dr. Benton estimates between 1 and 3 million golfers in the United States have untreated OSA.  Maybe next time you’re stuck behind a group of crappy golfers, you can recommend they go see a doctor!

The PGA Tour announced today it has no plans to change the playoff schedule and points system for the 2010 FedEx Cup.  Rick George, PGA Chief of Operations, said there are no changes on the agenda and that the issue was not even discussed at a policy board meeting earlier this week.  ”We think the FedEx Cup did a lot of positive things and met the objectives we set for it,” George said. “We don’t anticipate it changing.”

As I’ve mentioned before, I think the current FedEx Cup is a complete disaster.  It’s easy to look at the end result of this season and proclaim the FedEx Cup a complete success – it doesn’t get any better than Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson finishing in the top two slots, right?  The fact is, it could’ve been a lot worse.  And much like the BCS in college football, the longer the current setup remains in place, the better the odds that we’ll eventually get that “perfect storm” of horridness.

There were glimpses of what could go wrong this year.  Heath Slocum won a playoff event and jumped from #124 to #3 in the standings.  The fact is, 125 golfers is too many for a playoff system.  A playoff champion should be someone who played well all year, not someone who caught fire for 2 weeks at the end of the year.  Otherwise, why keeps points throughout the regular season?  Some of the players in the playoffs this year had only made 3 cuts all season!  Why even give one of those players an opportunity?  At best, they’ll play well enough to advance and rob a more deserving player of a spot in the later rounds.

A true playoff system should pit the final players against each other.  If the tour doesn’t want a completely match-play playoff system, then use the first 2 pointless weeks of the month-long affair as stoke-play qualifiers.  Once the field is whittled down, then have match-play to decide the true champion.  Otherwise, you’re just pointlessly trying to prop up tournaments that used to not mean anything.  Tour players care more about The Masters and The US Open.  Maybe pitting the best against each other individually will give the FedEx Cup real meaning.

Please start listening to your fans, PGA Tour.  Otherwise, instead of Tiger vs. Phil one, you might end up with Doug Barron and Ted Purdy in a dramatic battle for the title!  No offense to either of them, but I’m sure you can do the math how awesome those t.v. ratings would be…