Saturday, June 2, was the first time I played a round of golf with Jimmy Creegan: a doe eyed 26 year old beginning to understand the complexities and difficulties of the game of golf.  However, earlier that week Saturday’s round was put into jeopardy when I received an all too familiar text from a man with an impending weekend tee time: tweaked my back. might not be able to play.  I bet many of you thought the text read: no play. wife.  With the aid of the massaging hands of the golf gods, although unbeknownst to Jimmy at the time (he attributed the recovery to a few beers and a couple Advil), the back felt good enough to swing a golf club that Saturday. Game on.

That swing. A finger painting hanging next to a Van Gogh. A true original. But as they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Utilizing the ’2 off the first’, Jimmy reloaded after a screaming line drive shank out of play. His next tee shot bounded off the tee box like Thumper,  smashed into the trunk of a tree, and came to rest no more than 20 yards from where we stood.  He continued to play the par 5 first hole in a hybrid of hockey meets golf. He eventually arrived on the green where he calmly, and confidently I might add, sank his putt for quadruple bogey 9. To put the 9 in perspective, I was ball in pocket after 2 lost balls off the tee. Handicap control scoring.  We are all bad at golf. Off to the 2nd hole!

Jimmy teed off first. Not because he had the honor but because he was the anointed ’Wolf’ in our gambling wolf game that day.  Seven iron in hand Jimmy had put that 9 behind him and was ready to do god knew what at the time to that golf ball.  The rest of us were ready to watch his shot intently on the off chance he hit a wayward tee shot. Then, WHACK! Holy shit, the ball is in the air! And it’s high! And it’s slightly left of the pin! And it’s fading! And it appears to be hit the proper distance! These were the thoughts racing through my head during the five seconds of ball flight. The ball descended on the green. It was going to be a great golf shot. We all knew he was probably going ‘Lone Wolf’ after this tee shot. The ball landed in the middle of the green below the flagstick. It hopped once. It rolled a few feet. It disappeared. It felt like 2003 all over again: Shock and Awe.

In my 22 years of participating in this devil’s game called golf, I never had a personal experience with the mystical hole-in-one. The Grail of golf. And Jimmy did it! That son of a bitch –  my back hurts, I just took a 9, it’s my first time golfing with you – realized the ultimate dream: a hole-in-one.

And what did he do? Seven iron bye-bye. Take cover! Arms skyrocketed above his head. A scream. A yell. A barbaric YAWP. Some euphoric wail that reverberated through the trees. And then he was off. Sprinting. Screaming. Flailing. Reminded me of a George Costanza ‘Seinfeld’ moment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueh_1PeJhaQ. And then diving? Yes, he dove head first half-way down the embankment from the tee box. With dirt covering his face and grass stains covering the $90 golf pants he told me he splurged on, Jimmy, exhausted, trudged back to the tee. Hi-fives and pats on the back ensued as well as looks of ‘how does this get scored in our Wolf game’ were exchanged.  The worst part was that the rest of us had to hit the most anticlimactic tee shot of our lives. Naturally, we all proceeded to miss the green. But it did not matter. It was Jimmy’s golf moment. And the only thing that could make it more perfect? The cart girl pulled up. Jimmy bought himself a Beam and coke. He bought us…nothing. Cans of Bud Light were purchased post round. After retrieving his ball from the cup, we all putted out and headed to the 3rd hole to continue our round.

On our way to the tee box, Jimmy did something I warned him not to do. He called his fiance. I begged him not do it. Pleaded. ‘Don’t do it man. Keep riding the high! You’ll have to actually explain it. EXPLAIN IT!’ He ignored me. The call went something like, ‘Honey, I hit a hole-in-one! It’s really an awesome thing! It’s really hard to do!’  I stopped listening. But I had to smile. I witnessed the pinnacle of a golfer’s career. An indelible moment in the game of golf: a golfer’s first hole-in-one.

18ws congratulates you Jimmy Creegan! Your golfing achievement is now immortalized live over the Internet. Time for a drink (I guess I’ll pay for this one myself).

Monday Night Football. Baseball Wild Cards.  Nascar Sprint Cup. Bowl Championship Series. NBA draft lottery.  What do these events represent in the world of sports?  Adaptation. Sports change; they must in order to grow in popularity and evolve with the demands of their fan base.  Although the PGA Tour has made a few recent small steps in reinventing the sport, the tour remains a game steeped in tradition. To highlight a recent adaptation, the PGA Tour has implemented a modified version of the Nascar Sprint Cup with the advent of the FedEx Cup to add some excitement to its sport outside of a handful of events. Regardless of the successes and failures of this end of season chase for $10 million, this newly added event serves as an example of how golf recognizes (or at least I think it recognizes) the need to appeal to a ‘playoff generation’, attract young fans to the game, and grow the sport’s overall popularity.  A recent Golf Digest article acknowledged ‘golf’s aging baby-boomer demographic’ as to why the game needs young golf stars to draw and maintain the interest of a younger fan base.

Sustainability. Due to the individual nature of the game, the sport’s draw relies solely on the popularity and appeal of its best players. All sports need great players to draw attention to their game, but golf is a sport that is difficult to follow throughout an entire season. Tennis has the same problem. These sports desperately rely upon individual superstars to remain in the mainstream of the sports psyche. Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson will not be around forever; the game has already felt the negative impact of the temporary loss of these two superstars.   When fans are asked about a particular sport, the question is usually ‘Who is your favorite team?’.  Of course, all fans of sports love individual players, even those on opposing teams, but in the end, a fan wants to follow a team. The NFL, in 2011, had 1696 professional football players participating in the league. The league takes those 1696 players and puts them on 32 teams: the parts make up the whole. Think golf can’t do the same? Of course it can. All sorts of organizations, not only sports, take individuals and group them in order to gain some additional benefit. It is routine in business, politics, education, etc. This only makes sense. It is more manageable. It is more organized.  It is more sustainable. The PGA Tour can do this too. And with this would come an avalanche of opportunity.

What if I told you that there is a way to marry the individuality of golf with the American passion for team sports?What if the PGA Tour could keep its entire infrastructure of tournaments, sponsors, eligibility, and scoring, but could simultaneously develop a team component complete with a draft, a team season, and a team championship event?  This is what 18whiskeyshots outlines in the following proposal:

I.     2011 Season Model
II.   The Scoring System
III. Team Organization
IV.  The Draft
V.    Team Season
VI.  Team Championship

What does the PGA Tour have to change to make this happen? Nothing.  Nothing needs to change. The FedEx Cup can continue to be the individual chase for $10 million. Majors can continue to be the focal point of the golf season. Golfers will still participate as individuals competing to earn a living throughout the season, but they will also be a part of a team. A team that is drafted at the start of the year. A team that relies upon teammate performance. A team that competes against other teams throughout the 45 tournament season. A team with an opportunity to earn a berth in the championship game.

The PGA Tour would be a team sport with a defined season. Fans could support and follow a team from draft day to the conclusion of the season while rooting for their favorite team to compete in the team championship event.

All of this is possible and nothing needs to change. Nothing. Not possible? Anything is possible.  How? Your golf ball just went down a rabbit hole. Come find it. It’s a ProV1 for crying out loud!

I’m not afraid to say it: I like Lee Westwood. I truly like the guy. I want to see him win a major, and I want it to happen this year. Please disregard the fact – full disclosure – that I drafted ‘T3 Lee’ first in my 2012 fantasy golf league. Who did I pass on? Phil Mickelson. I will not go into that I also drafted Matt Kuchar over Phil as well – full disclosure- because it is tangential to the main point: ‘T3 Lee’ will win the 2012 U.S. Open at Olympic Club. The prediction has no correlation to my current 5th place standing (out of only 7 teams) in my 2012 fantasy golf league, and my desperate need for a major championship win to give me any chance at becoming a fantasy golf league champion for the first time. The prediction is steeped in the parallelism of the careers of ‘T3 Lee’ and Phil Mickelson; specifically, the four seasons leading up to their first major championship win.

Using the power of Al Gore’s Internet – the man is a true pioneer – I wanted to evaluate and compare the four seasons leading up to Phil’s 2004 first major championship at Augusta to ‘T3 Lee’s’ four seasons leading up to the 2012 U.S. Open at the Olympic Club. During these four seasons, I was only concerned with their major championship finishes. What I found confirmed my initial suspicion: an eerie similarity.

Here’s a table to illustrate the major championship finishes of Phil and ‘T3 Lee’ during the aforementioned four seasons. Here are the results (thank you Mr. Gore).

With the data at my fingertips, I wanted to compare Phil and ‘T3 Lee’ in these three categories: Top 10s, Top 20s, and No Chance in Hell of Winning.

Scary. Really scary. It’s almost too easy of a prediction.  ‘T3 Lee’ and Phil in these four seasons both played under the proverbial ‘best player to not win a major’ umbrella or cloud or whatever other weather metaphor one wants to use to compare the pressure with which Phil carried from 2000-2004 and  ‘T3 Lee’ carries today.  What did these four seasons build within each golfer? A sense of urgency. And you will read this again and again in the Saloon: ONE MUST PLAY WITH A SENSE OF URGENCY TO BE A CHAMPION.  A sense of urgency is the creator of the necessary elements of making a champion: Focus. Determination. Perseverance. Confidence.  Phil created it during his four seasons leading up to his 2004 Masters win. ‘T3 Lee’ has created it as well.

He is there. It is his time. We all know he cannot putt, and his short game is 15 handicappish at times; HOWEVER, I assert it will not matter over the four days at Olympic Club. His ball striking right now is superb. Superb.  As Jennifer Lopez puts it on American Idol, it gives me ‘goosies’.  Sidenote: Phillip Phillips, season 11 AI winner, I cannot wait until you come to my town to perform.

The 2012 U.S. Open at Olympic Club is ‘T3 Lee’s’ to lose. Not for anyone else to win. Does he like the course? How about a T7 in 1998. The ‘T3 Lee’ moniker will be removed on June 17th when he hoists the trophy using his top heavy chest muscles over his head.  Take the 15/1 odds that Vegas is offering and bet the mortgage on ‘T3 Lee’.   The Saloon has spoken. Time for a drink.

It’s killing the game of golf. Killing it. The 4.5-5.5 hours it takes to play 18 holes.  But what is even more egregious than the outrageous amount of time one must devote to playing a round of golf IN A GOLF CART is the tacit acceptance of it.  Well, I will remain silent no longer and have adopted a phrase here at 18ws to put an end to the agonizing slow play that infects almost every golf course every weekend in the United States. Yes, I have traveled to play golf in Scotland and Ireland. And in the lands where the game originated, golf is played at its proper steady pace: 4 hours or less. And those courses are hard and EVERYONE walks!   The phrase is a modification of the NFL’s motto of ‘Play 60’ to encourage children to actually go outside and play rather than get extremely fat and acquire diabetes at the age of 7.

PLAY IN 240! 60 minutes in an hour. Multiply that by 4 and you have 240 minutes that a round of golf should take to complete.

As Tom Cruise states in one of my favorite films ‘A Few Good Men’, the law is about placing blame.  Private Santiago is dead and it is someone’s fault.  So whose fault is it that when I arrive at a golf course on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday , I know it is going to take me 4.5 hours minimum to finish my 18 holes?

I will leave it to you to be judge and jury, but I would like to offer to you some perpetrators of the current state of slow play in this country.

Purp I: GOLF COURSE MANAGEMENT

In an effort to increase revenues, tee times are stacked on top of each other at many golf courses on the weekend to maximize the number of rounds played.  Management knows that pace of play is no longer an issue with golfers since we have come to accept a 5 hour round as typical; therefore, management has no issue with creating logjams throughout the course with tee times that are 5-6 minutes apart.

Purp II: THE STARTER

An art that has been lost in the 21st century. A competent starter is crucial to creating a flow off the first tee that makes sense and allows for the best chance of the rounds of golf to be completed in 4 hours or less.  You miss your tee time. Back of the line. You do not get ‘fit in’. You either are out or you must take the next available OPEN slot. However, starters with the support of Purp I – MANAGEMENT – rarely if ever do this: see revenue discussed above. And again, since slow play is now the norm the starter feels no obligation to pace of play.  Starters also should shuffle tee times based on number of golfers in each group. A foursome is now a twosome then an adjustment should be made with thought to pace of play on the course.  Starters need to be more in tune with pace of play; they START the rounds.

Purp III: COURSE MARSHALS

Oh, where have you gone course marshals? Or rather, why do you never do anything course marshals? Even if a golf course has a course marshal(s), in its present state, it is basically akin to a greeter at WalMart: how’s everyone doing? Or hot day isn’t it?  No authority whatsoever and no willingness to actually say something to a group that has fallen a hole behind.  Make golfers pick up their ball and drive to the next tee if they have fallen a hole behind. DO SOMETHING. Do not wave and meekly ask them to pick up the pace. Give the group a warning and then if not heeded order them to pick up their crappy drives and drive to the next tee box.  Trust me. Once that happens, golfers will no longer fall entire holes behind on golf courses.

Purp IV: MR. PRACTICE SWING

You get ONE. ONE practice swing and it is a PRE-SHOT practice swing. You are playing golf now. It is not practice. Practice? Are we talking about practice? Not a game. Practice? It’s a game. No time for practice. It’s time to play and perform.  ONE practice swing. And do not ever, EVER, take a POST-SHOT practice swing. EVER.

Purp V: CART LOVE

Just because you are riding in a cart together does not mean you need to sit side by side driving over the river and through the woods. Take your cart partner to his or her ball, let them get the yardage and select their club(s) and then go drive to your ball and prepare to hit your shot.  Then once you miss each other so intensely and you both have hit your shots, drive and pick them up. Stop the cart love. You are in a motorized vehicle so use it to your advantage to play faster, not slower.

Purp VI: YOU SHALL NOT PASS GROUP

Playing through. Non-existent. Does not happen enough. Happens ALL the time in Scotland and Ireland. ALL THE TIME.  But even on the few occasions when it does happen here, it is done poorly or incorrectly. If you want a group to play through, do not stop playing and wait for that group to arrive at the tee box. KEEP PLAYING. Wave them through from the fairway or even onto the green.  Never stop and wait. NEVER.  There is no pride in golf. We all are bad at it. Honor the game by not holding other groups up while keeping in mind the golf course flow as a whole: do not stop and wait on a tee box to let a group play through. I will make a pitch for a par 3 being a great place to allow a group to play through after everyone has hit their shots AND driven to them.

Purp VII: BEGINNERS

I will tread lightly here because we all at one time were beginners to the game of golf. And of course we want to ENCOURAGE anyone to play the great game of golf. BUT, we want them to begin the game the right way: baby steps. Play par 3 courses. Play 9 holes. Play forward tees. Play open courses. Play courses with limited hazards.  Ease into the game. And while you are learning and easing into the game, do not keep score. After 6-7 shots, pick the ball up and go to the next hole.  Or hit it 4-5 times, and then put the ball on the green to practice putting.   It is a hard game. Make it easier on yourself when you are just starting out and do not worry about your score. Learn how to play golf in 4 hours or less. My father passed this nugget of info to me when I was novice golfer: you can play bad golf in less than 4 hours. And he is correct. You can. You should. You will.

Purp VIII: APB BALL SEARCH

Always hit a provisional. Always. If you think you have lost your ball off the tee or hit it out of bounds, then simply take the 15 seconds to hit a provisional.  If that one is out of play, then move on with your life.  When searching for that all important golf ball to salvage a bogey, do not look for the golf ball in a search party. Drop the poor sap off at the entrance of the forest to begin the search for that $5 golf ball. Everyone else in the group should go to their balls and play their shots.  If time permits, return to the woods and assist in the search for no more than 30 seconds to a minute.  No ball. Drop and hit or grab a beer and go along for the ride. If the provisional is in play, then limit your search time and go play the ball that is visible.

Purp IX: THE CART GIRL

I have to admit that I too enjoy stopping the cart girl as she makes her way around the golf course. I might even stop her multiple times. The amount of times I might stop the cart girl depends on a few factors: current performance/score, physical features of said cart girl, thirst/hunger levels, or desire to erase memory.  However, the cart girl should never be a reason to hold up the group behind you. Signal the girl to meet you after everyone has putted out or on the next tee box.

Purp X: THE BAG SHALL NOT BE REMOVED FROM THE BACK OF THE CART GUY

The golf bag once placed onto the back of a golf cart can be removed and carried; it is not a permanent fixture.  The removal of the golf bag from the cart is not a King Arthurian feat.  On days when it is cart path only or when you have hit the ball so wildly that it is more appropriate to simply remove your golf bag and carry it to your ball, please do so.  This will eliminate the anger that builds on the tee box behind you when you take one club, walk to the ball, realize you have the wrong club, walk back across the fairway to the cart, and grab the correct club. It is not going to kill you to carry your bag once or twice on a day you are riding in a golf cart.

Purp XI: THE GROUP IN FRONT/THE GROUP BEHIND

The golf course provides all golfers with a measurement so to speak of your group’s pace of the play: the group in front of you and the group behind you.  Keep up with the group in front and do not hold up the group behind. Use these two groups to manage your pace of play. Push the group in front if they are playing slowly. Increase your pace if you are the group being pushed or let the group play through.  Do not concede the pace of play as a group. Once you accept that the day will be slow, then your group is condoning the 5 hour pace. Do your part as a group to move the pace along. Even as the group in-between, you also play the role of the group in front and the group behind.

Purp XII: GLUTTON FOR PUNISHMENT GOLFER

Golf is an individual game played within a group setting. Be an individual. Understand your ability level and play the proper tees. Not all golfers need to tee off from the same set of tees.  Swallow your pride and move forward if that is going to allow you to enjoy the round more and play at a faster pace. With the use of handicap, even when playing a different set of tees, you are still able to compete against the other golfers in your group.  I once played behind someone who kept topping tee shot after tee shot from the blue tees. After a few holes of enduring this misery, I politely suggested he move forward to the white tees. He replied, ‘I am a glutton for punishment’. To which I replied, ‘But I am not.’  Play the tees you are comfortable playing while keeping in mind pace of play.

Twelve perpetrators of the agonizing slow play that is infecting and killing this great game have been presented.  I encourage comments as well as other perpetrators of slow play to have their day in court. Feel free to email me other purps of the gross offense of playing 4.5 to 5.5 hour rounds of golf. We need to change our attitude and approach to how we play the game of golf. For some reason, we have all come to embrace that golf is game that must take an exorbitant amount of time to play. It is not true. With a change in attitude and a focus on improving our pace of play, we can all PLAY IN 240! We can do it. I know we can. The Saloon has spoken. Time for a drink.