December 2009
8 posts
My New Blog
I have to move my blog. Sorry.
Find the new blog—as well as a lot more stuff—on my website: www.jimgolfrank.com.
Thanks. Hope to see you there.
My Two Seconds of (Uncredited) Fame
Hugh Grant on Letterman last night. If you have to ask why this is important to me, let me know or go to Amazon and check it out!
Can It Get Any Sillier?
Three things here. You decide their relative importance.
1) Article in the New York Times about a doctor from Canada possibly giving performance-enhancing drugs and guess whose name is prominently mentioned?
2) Article in the New York Times about a young golfer getting advice from an older countryman who uses guess who as the negative role model.
3) Would you all still follow me if I moved by...
Is It Over Yet?
I’m looking forward to the day when all the blogs, Tweets, and Facebook Status Updates aren’t about Tiger, aren’t bad jokes about hitting hydrants and 9-irons, and I can stop hearing about what goes on inside the velvet ropes at VIP clubs. It’s not a national tragedy, but it is a fall from grace the sort we haven’t seen in a long, long time—and perhaps never in...
My New Site
Looking for more from me than quick thoughts and blog posts? Check out my new website for longer articles, old and new, with more to come. www.jimgolfrank.com. Tell your friends. Have a bake sale. Send money. Enjoy.
A Question and a Suggestion for Tiger
I’m sick of this Tiger thing. Not sick about it—discovering that an idol has feet of clay—but sick of hearing it, reading it, and being asked about it.
It’s time to leave Tiger alone and let him try to solve his personal problems privately, just as any of us would want in a similar situation. Yes, he is a public figure, but that doesn’t give us the right to invade...
Tiger's "Transgressions"
The following was posted this morning on Tiger’s website, tigerwoods.com (check it out for comments from viewers, which are pouring in). An interesting admission. Now let’s see if the public/media leave him alone or not. Wanna take bets?
I have let my family down and I regret those transgressions with all of my heart. I have not been true to my values and the behavior my family...
Perhaps Tiger Was Right...
Mulling legal precedents, perhaps?
If you’re convinced that Tiger did the wrong thing by remaining silent, maybe the world’s greatest golfer is smarter (or has better legal representation) than many of us think. My son the law student sent me this link to a legal site that posits some very good reasons for Tiger keeping mum about the accident and especially his wife’s actions....
November 2009
8 posts
My Take on Tiger
Uh-oh… not another errant drive?
Since it’s now impossible to be in the golf business without putting in one’s two cents on the Tiger traffic trauma, here are my thoughts.
1) I think he was up at 2:30am so he could be first on line at Walmart, or maybe Target, where he was going to snap up some Black Friday savings. A coffeemaker, perhaps? Or a Snuggie? Maybe the kids asked...
"It's not in the USGA's by-laws to grow the game"
One of my more interesting assignments of late was interviewing USGA Executive Director David B. Fay. Next week, Fay will be presented with the Distinguished Service Award by the Metropolitan Golf Association (that’s the New York metro area, more than 500 clubs!), and I was asked to write his profile for the association’s Met Golfer magazine, which you can read here (sorry, for now...
Sausages, Laws...and Golf
I used to watch for mentions of golf in the non-golf media, looking for signs that this was a good thing or not. Stories of deals done on courses, politicos escaping to hedge-shrouded fairways, celebrities picking up the game. Back in the go-golf late 1980s and ’90s, almost any mention of golf was ultimately a positive, luring potential new players to sporting-good stores, clubs, and (my...
Happy Anniversary!
It just occurred to me—jet-lagged as I still am—that a very significant anniversary recently passed. Of no importance to you perhaps, but life-changing for me so I can’t let it go unnoticed.
In mid-November, 1984, exactly 25 years ago, I began working at Golf Magazine. I’d been in magazine publishing for a number of years, mostly travel books and in-flights, and had taken up golf just a few years...
A Little Unabashed Shilling
I was reminded today of a mildly auspicious event happening in exactly one month’s time, the opening on December 18 of the Ritz-Carlton, Dove Mountain north of Tucson, Arizona, in the foothills of the Tortolita Mountains.
Admittedly this event probably wouldn’t mean much to me if I hadn’t toured the hotel—which was nothing more than a construction site and girders—last August. At the property’s...
Thai Sticks
I made it back from Thailand both exhausted and exhilarated, which is how travel is supposed to be. There is an enormous amount to say, which I’ll do first in the various magazine assignments I have as they, unfortunately, pay a little better than you all do. However, a few observations.
First, Thailand is an adult amusement park. That is both good and bad. Good in that tourism is the...
This Is How Close I Was
I’m the one on the right.
This is about an hour from Chiang Rai, way up north in Thailand, in the Golden Triangle. Yes, that Golden Triangle. In fact, the Museum of Opium was across the street from the Anantara Resort where we stayed, but it was closed. I really wanted to see it.
The resort maintains a very cool, humane “elephant camp,” where about 30 elephants reside. Guests...
At The Border
Almost nothing in what follows will be about golf, but I just did some things so incredibly cool that no matter what else happens on this trip, I’m happy.
We were driven this morning from Chiang Mai, in the north of Thailand, about four hours north and east, north of Chiang Rai, another 900-year-old city, up into the Golden Triangle. No longer quite the drug haven it used to be (although there is...
October 2009
27 posts
A Modest Proposal
From halfway around the world, it’s very difficult to monitor what’s happening in the world of golf, or at least those parts of it that interest me. But from logging on half a day earlier, or is it later, than you in the U.S., I’ve been able to keep track of a few things. And as I’m sitting in the spectacular Anantara Resort in Phuket, Thailand, sadly waiting to check out (and head north to Chiang...
Tempest In A Tee Box
When I was working at Golf Magazine in the 1980s and ‘90s, a time concurrent with the last “golf boom,” I reveled in finding references to the game in non-sports media. It was in business magazines because golf courses were as popular as boardrooms for making deals; it was in the celebrity/entertainment rags because the game had status among the Hollywood elite (Nicholson, Eastwood,...
Doctor, Tee Thyself
A sport both urologists and proctologists can love.
While working on the X-Blog (below) about golf’s problems finding new players, I got to thinking about why the ranks of golfers haven’t swelled over the last decade. As I’ve often noted, we had the world’s most exciting athlete (or if not the most exciting, one of them), and until the last year or so, the economy was booming.
So what went...
Where Have All The Golfers Gone?
X-Blog, second installment. Stephanie Wei (Wei Under Par) and Jim Frank (Over The Green) have little in common other than they both play golf (occasionally) and both blog. X-Blog is where they comment on the same issue in the game, and maybe have a few barbs/comments for the other, as well. Once you’ve read it, we’d like to hear your thoughts on what can be done to grow the game and...
Sis Boom Bah—Humbug!
After reading an NCAA report cited in today’s Wall Street Journal (here) about the revenues generated by college sports—Executive Summary: At the big schools football and basketball make money, everything else loses—I decided to dig a little deeper and see how golf does when it comes to college economics.
Answer? Not too well.
At Division I-A schools (the big ones), golf definitely loses money....
Talking Vietnam Golf Course Blues
There’s a very interesting story in today’s New York Times (read it here) about golf in Vietnam and how the development of courses is displacing farmers, using up valuable farm land, and using too much water. I was in Vietnam just about this time last year and had the chance to play four or five courses, but not the Da Lai course mentioned here, which is up north. The newest one I saw,...
Birth Of The X-Blog
Stephanie Wei (Wei Under Par) and Jim Frank (Over The Green) have little in common other than they both play golf (occasionally) and both blog. With little more than that, they decided to create what they’re calling the “X-blog,” or cross-blog, where they’ll comment on the same issue in the game, and maybe have a few barbs/comments for the other, as well. Feel free to chime in. To kick off the...
Looking Back
I went to the USGA Museum in Far Hills, New Jersey, yesterday. The last time I’d been was a year and a half ago, while it was a construction site. Going back gave me a chance to see the finished product.
To no one’s surprise, the result is elegant, intelligent, and low-key. Golf isn’t baseball and this isn’t Cooperstown. There are no attempts to make the game bigger than what it is: The emphasis...
Economics 101
So when the Dow hits 10,000 we all get jobs, right?
Okay, Golfers, Have Another Piece of Bacon
From today’s Wall Street Journal:
5
Number of extra years golfers live compared to non-golfers, according to a 2008 study of about 300,000 Swedish people.
Source: Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports
Random Thought
Is Boo Weekley seven times a better golfer than John Daly?
Monday Morning Warm-Up
Since I’m trying to not write too much about the pros, I was hoping to ignore the Presidents Cup both on television and here. But I did watch just enough to be reminded how dull professional golf can be. Yes, there were exceptions—Tiger’s shotmaking on Saturday, for example—but such events inevitably become putting contests, which, even when for eagles, are soporific.
...
Typing "Gold" For "Golf" Is No Longer A Typo
So golf is in the Olympics. Great. I’m not upset, certainly not bitter. I just thought the games could have been better represented by other sports. But I’m glad Tiger and Michelle and Ian are excited about the prospects of playing for their countries. And somewhere, there is a kid we’ve yet to hear of…
But still, a few thoughts.
If it is decided that a new golf course...
And I Thought I Was Done For The Day
This blogging thing. There’s always something else to say. For instance…
From what I’m reading in the blogosphere, golf’s chances for Olympic acceptance are in trouble because the suits that hand out the gold think that golfers don’t rank medals over majors. The pros have to prove that playing for one’s country is a bigger deal than winning an Open. To do that,...
Due To Popular Opinion...
It has been suggested that I post an article I wrote that ran back in the spring in Tee It Up (http://www.teeitupmagazine.com/), a magazine that comes out of Southern California and is associated with the weekly radio show of the same name (http://www.teeitupshow.com/). So here it is. My apologies for the length but it won’t take too long, promise. And please remember that it was written...
One To Watch?
For years, I’ve been critical of the golf industry’s lame attempts to grow the game. The Golf 20/20 meetings I attended about a decade ago did nothing but produce half-assed proposals to bring new people in, get the manufacturers and others working together, and even, one year, to try increasing revenue not by going after new players but by getting existing players to tee it up more...
I Know I'm Going To Regret This, But...
Years ago at Golf Magazine, I had the brilliant idea of asking readers for their favorite (clean) golf jokes. I thought that with 1.4 million readers someone would have a joke I hadn’t heard (“Hit the ball, drag Harry”; “No, he thinks he’s Jack Nicklaus”; “That’s my wife’s funeral driving by”), but I was wrong. In fact, I don’t...
Best Laid Plans
It’s been less than a week that I’ve been doing this blogging thing, and it’s a blast, especially using it as an opportunity to get back in contact with friends I’ve let lapse. (More another time on how we baby boomers have co-opted Facebook et al to our own selfish motives.) And for every 1,000 oysters, you just may get a pearl, like the following sent to me from an old...
Read Them And Weep?
Sad news, indeed, in the media world with Conde Nast announcing the shuttering of Gourmet, Modern Bride, and Elegant Bride magazines. In all cases, the large, privately-owned CN has other magazines in the same categories and the company has been suffering the same decline in ad pages and revenue that has decimated publishing the last few years. But the closing of a famous, well-regarded title like...
New York State of Mind
John Paul Newport’s Saturday golf column in the Wall Street Journal is always good reading. Being a New Yorker, I was especially interested in his piece this weekend on Ferry Point, the Jack Nicklaus-designed course in the Bronx that has mushroomed from a projected $22.4 million project to more than $100 million and, with luck, will open in late 2011 (only nine years late, if you believed...
What's Portuguese for Bogey?
So Rio wins the 2016 Olympics. Is that good, or not good, for golf’s chances to be reinstated as an Olympic sport? (At least with Chicago, Tokyo, and Madrid we could guess where the matches would be played. What’s the best course in Brazil?)
On the bigger issue, I don’t think golf should be in the Olympics. It’s already among the most international of games and I can...
Excessive? I don't think so...
The crime story posted here was obviously not written by a golfer. Just read the first sentence and you’ll know why…
http://bostonist.com/2009/10/02/golfblotter_couple_allegedly_stole.php
Thanks to Aaron M for passing this along.
Dressed In A Wig and a Dress?
How do you sneak a hippo out of a zoo? http://dcist.com/2009/09/happy_the_hippo_leaves_national_zoo.php
When The Right is Right
What would a blog be without the occasional political bantering? However, much to the shock of many, my first inclusion of political thought is coming from the Right. Courtesy of David Brooks of the New York Times, these thoughts are actually much less about which side to take than they are about taking the side in which you believe. And who not to listen to. Interesting reading no matter who or...
Grist For The Mill
It seems Jerry Tarde, Editor-in-Chief of Golf Digest, has listed his five sacred rules for private clubs. (I know Jerry, I like and respect Jerry, and I know he belongs to more than a few private clubs.)
His rules are, and I quote:
1. The most important: Never throw a club in anger. 2. Do not change your shoes in the parking lot. (Perfectly OK at a public course, but the locker room at private...
A Philosophical Tidbit
When you and I play golf, it’s a game. When the pros play it, it’s a sport. Discuss.
Teeing Off
Two observations that are good for golf. I hope.
1) I was waiting on line in Fairway, underneath the West Side Highway about 130th Street, and heard two 30-ish guys behind me talking about golf. About how dull the FedEx Cup is and about how Tiger gave a putting lesson to Sean O’Hair, an act of friendship that wouldn’t happen in most other sports.
2) Having drinks with Stephanie Wei,...