Actually, it's just the first draft for the opening of tomorrow's radio show, That's Golf! on Your Longhorn Flagship Station, AM 1300, The Zone, in Austin, TX, as we like to say, "a proud part of your Saturday morning cartoon line-up."
Scripts are funny, sometimes chucked, sometimes followed to the letter. I figure they're akin to scripting the first few plays of a football game, as I believe Andy Reid does. Some backstory: the day after Ronald Reagan was shot, I happened to be on a class trip that went into the bowels of NBC at Rockefeller Center. There was the studio, and there was John Chancellor's script on onion skin paper from the previous night. I swiped the first page, which I still have, which included his lede, that the president had been shot, along with the opening camera cues. I never forgot. There's also a conversation between Studs Terkel and a very young Woody Allen. They're backstage at some club in Chicago. Allen says that he feels that improv is kind of a cop out, that folks deserve a show and, by implication, the fruits of good writing and adequate preparation. I'm not going to make either claim here. Will I use it tomorrow? Probably, but like a good coach, you have to be willing to go to Plan B, or, in my case, Plans C, D, E & F.
That's Golf! 6/23/07
Could there really be anyone in this great land who still believes that America has a hegemony on the professional game?
The U.S. may have the most lucrative tour. It may have the No. 1 player in the game. The best teachers? The best juniors? The best courses? No, arguably, on all three counts. This is an international game. (In fact, it always has been.) The U.S. no more dominates the top echelon then Britannia still rules the waves.
Golf geo-politics is not one of our topics this morning, but you have to understand that when Tim Finchem, the PGA Tour commissioner, talks about the fifth major and the sixth major, and so on, he’s living in a dream world.
Oakmont was a major championship. The course, the field, the pressure & the stakes exemplify why majors are so compelling. The PGA Tour can run all the ads with footage of Jones and Hogan and what all else, trying to generate some sort of excitement for a corporate end-of-season points race that’s so unforgettable by comparison to the sort of golf we had last week, that it hardly warrants discussion.
Good morning, an irritable Jim Apfelbaum inviting you again to the golfer’s slice of the Saturday morning cartoon line-up here on the Zone. I’m delighted both of you could drop by. We’ll visit later with David Mackintosh who is in fact the golf correspondent for the Buenos Aires Herald. We’ll talk about golf down Argentina way, and about Senor Pato Cabrera.
It’s almost too soon to go back to watching. Just tune in for a minute. They’re playing a TPC course in Connecticut, and I do think it’s fair and proper that the tour should visit New England, a place of considerable significance to the heritage of golf in America, and home to some exceptional courses. Our own Ben Crenshaw said on his first visit to the Country Club outside Boston, it was the first time he saw people wearing coats and ties coming out to the golf course.
Let’s break this down just for a minute, and I promise to get off this. We’ve got far too much to talk about. Of course, Bryan Gathright will join me in about 20 minutes, and we’ll make time if there’s something gnawing at you. He sidles by and kindly offers his insights on everything from the swing to club selection to effective practice.
Here’s just one difference, one thing that, in my uninformed opinion, has helped transform America from a golfing power into something less than the success we’ve grown accustomed to. And we’re seeing this develop from an aberration into a trend. Ernie Els, Retief Goosen, Angel Cabrera, Michael Campbell, Geoff Ogilvy. Take Tiger Woods out of the equation and how would things look for the good old red, white and blue?
Oakmont's fairways were 22 to 35 yards wide. They were lined by bunkers and extremely dense rough that was 1 1/2 to 5 inches deep. The greens registered 13 1/2 to 14 1/2 on the Stimpmeter. By contrast, TPC fairways are 30 to 40 yards wide. The rough is 1 1/4 to 4 1/2 inches and the comparatively flat greens run about 11 feet. And there are an estimated 91 fewer bunkers this week at the TPC River Highlands than the 210 at the U.S. Open. And, you had best believe that our boys are glad to be back where the rough doesn’t cost them a shot….where the bombers rule the roost… -0-
