Interview with the Guru: Clubmaxxgolfbags.com.

The Newstand: Odds of Woods Winning the US Open, and Get a Tax Deduction for Playing Golf.

Golf of the Weird: Black Ops Golf Psychology.

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Let’s put this in context. For the last few weeks everyone was talking about Tiger as if he’d already won this year’s Master. It was a done deal. He was a shoe-in. The oddmasters had him at 2 to 1. A lock.

Yet this headline makes it sound like he done for. There’s no hope. He’s already six strokes behind. Too bad, maybe he’ll win the next one.

Whoa rabid Tiger worshippers. How quickly the media jumps off the bandwagon just so they can write a compelling headline.

Context my friends. CONTEXT.

Let’s not forgot that when this was written at about 10AM in the morning, Tiger hadn’t even teed off for the second round. His tee time was at 1:52 pm. Almost four hours later. Let me repeat that TIGER HADN’T EVEN TEED OFF YET!

A case of burying the body before the person has even died.

Mr. Media and Rapid Celebrity Worshippers, let the man actually play the course before you write him off.

Interview with the Guru: San Diego Golf Academy.

The Newstand: Odds of Woods Wining the Masters, How Did Amen Corner Get It’s Name, and Last Remaining Living Player from 1934 Masters.

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Interview with the Guru: Femco Steel Technology (FST).

The Newstand: Wie Drops Out of Safeway Event, Adam Scott Hates Slow Play, and Feherty Gets Hit By Truck.

Golf of the Weird: Stopclubabuse.org.

Golf Around the World: Old Works Golf Course.

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The Newstand: Ernie Els Supports Autism.

Golf of the Weird: Golfer Kills Protected Hawk.

State of the Game: Women Can Compete with Men.

The Perfect Fit: Shaft Makers in the World of Adjustability.

She Golfs Too: Golf’s Venus and Serena Williams. View the video. HERE.

Component Corner: Scratch Golf Wedges is Growing.

Component Corner: When Tiger Moves, Where Will His Home Course Be?

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In 2007, the USGA, decided to establish a new rule on club adjustability It allows for woods and irons to be developed with interchangeable heads, variable shafts and even customizable lengths, lofts and weights. If you read the trade ads you’d think just by buying one of these fancy new adjustable clubs, your score will drop by 10 strokes. Nonsense.

Yet that is basically what the TaylorMades, Nikes and Nickent Golfs are saying: buy this over-priced, over-hyped, adjustable golf club with a patented new connector that lets you pull out one shaft and replace it with another and presto, you’re on your way to becoming a scratch golfer.

On the surface this might seem like a great idea until you check out the price tag for this new fangled technology. It wasn’t enough to make us buy the latest TaylorMade r7 or Callaway FT-i driver for $599. No sir, now, to get this latest technological leap forward into our bags we must cough up $1000 for TaylorMade’s “Tour Van in a Box” that contains a driver head and three graphite shafts.

Yet it doesn’t end there.

To make sure that we’d never put a non-TaylorMade shaft into their fancy head, a proprietary connector is needed. This will assure that you only buy the expensive shafts from the company even though you could buy the same shaft, without the connector, for less. Even if we did end up buying one of these fancy drivers, we still couldn’t swap out the shaft in the middle of a round. No no that would be illegal. That can only occur between rounds.

Every year the equipment manufacturers look for new ways to separate golfers from their money and we oblige them by purchasing billions of dollars of new equipment annually. This year’s technological leap du jour is adjustable shafts. If you remember last year’s flavor it was adjustable weights. Next year maybe they will let us use those laser-guided putters.

Frank Thomas, the inventor of the graphite shaft and the GOLF CHANNEL’s Chief Technical Advisor weighed in a few weeks ago “I don’t think the USGA has thought this out to the extent it should have and instead jumped on something, which in the short term is going to please the manufacturers who are looking for something to stimulate their lagging sales.”

I’ll say this again like I’ve said it so many times in the past: take that $1000 and buy yourself some lessons or get your clubs custom fit. These options are much more likely to lower your score than a fancy adjustable-shafted driver.

Interview with the Guru: Strategic Shaft Technologies.

The Newstand: Tiger Woods Kicks Butt and Michelle Wie Sucks.

She Golfs Too: Female Golfer Banned from Tournament.

Component Corner: TaylorMade Sells Maxfli.

State of the Game: Nine Hole Courses Could be the Answer.

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Interview with the Guru: Sweetwood Golf Company.

The Newstand: Siemens Embroiled in Norwegian Golf Bribe Controversy, and Mickelson Shoots an Eleven and Misses Cut.

Golf of the Weird: Golfer’s Dog is Eaten.

State of the Game: Marriot must allow accessible golf carts.

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I’d love to see the top players at every tournament. The sponsors like it, the crowds thrive on it and the television networks count on it, but it will rarely happen to start the season. Top players like Tiger and Phil are brands in and of themselves. They aren’t beholden to the Tour. They will show up when the want to.

Tiger and Phil run the PGA and give the marching orders. The PGA and tour players need to understand that. Tiger, Incorporated and Phil & Company are the draws that bring in the dollars. They are the moneymakers for the PGA. They are multi-million dollars corporations and the PGA benefits from their largess. If Tiger said that he wanted to start The Tiger Tour and would commit to playing every tournament; goodbye PGA.

Let’s use tennis as an example. When Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe were playing, tennis was hot. Everyone wanted to see a Connors-McEnroe match-up. Even ladies tennis was interesting to watch when Martina, Chissy and Billy Jean King were playing.

Although Phil Sampras is considered one of the greatest tennis players in the history of the game, nobody seems to care other than hardcore tennis fans. He doesn’t capture the imagination of fans and sponsors like Tiger does. An interview with Sampras is like getting your wisdom teeth pulled and just as painful. He doesn’t make for good media fodder.

No so with Phil or Tiger. They are the game of golf today. Think Oprah and her book club. She makes best sellers out of books just by talking about them. Tiger sells cars, watches and golf clubs just by lending his name to the brand. The PGA needs to understand that they don’t make the rules anymore, the star players do.

Tim Finchem gets overpaid and has nothing to do with the Tour’s popularity. His no-show at the Mercedes-Benz Championships to start the year is a non-event. The Tour needs to realize where its bread is butter and it ain’t by Commissioner Finchem.

Take the recent court cases brought by Callaway against Titleist, Bridgestone against Titleist and DogLeg Right against TaylorMade. All are suing each other because of supposed patent infringements.

In the case of DogLeg Right, they accuse TaylorMade of violating two patents that “…cover technology that allows the user to adjust the center of gravity of the clubhead in up to three dimensions in order to produce golf ball trajectories varying from high to low fades, high to low draws, and high to low straight shots.” The supposed clubs that violate these patents are TaylorMade’s r7 Quad driver, TaylorMade r7 425 Quad driver, and TaylorMade r7 CGB Max driver and fairway woods.

A recent court victory was awarded to Callaway over Acushnet, makers of the top-selling golf ball the Titleist Pro V1. The jury awarded Callaway a victory on “….the construction of a multilayer ball with a solid core and a polyurethane cover that are used in the Titleist Pro V1 ball.” Callaway acquired the patents in 2003 when it purchased Top-Flite Golf following the bankruptcy of parent Spalding Sports Worldwide.

Acushnet was recently involved in another golf ball case that has been settled out-of-court with Bridgestone Sports Co. Ltd., resolving a 2 1/2-year ball patent infringement suit. Acushnet will be required to pay Bridgestone on-going royalties for use of an undisclosed number of Bridgestone patents.

Lawsuits are part of the business landscape and suing your competition is generally the chosen path, but for the major golf businesses, if they spent more time on innovation and growing the game and less on legal court fights, maybe their businesses would perform better.

Although modest in comparison to the Tiger Woods effort, the academy has grown to include three sessions this year – two regional academies in Texas and Louisiana, and the national academy in Fairfax, Va. – up from one in 2005, its first year. A total of 600 teachers attended the three academies. Each academy had the same goal: to train third- through fifth-grade teachers with new strategies and philosophies to keep kids interested in the sciences.

Even off the course in the charitable world, Tiger and Phil compete with each other. In this competition, Tiger is directing his efforts to students and Phil toward teachers. Still, both are concentrating on the precipitous drop in math and science scores occuring in the United States. It’s nice to see Phil supporting such a good cause.

Golf equipment isn’t a very good investment these days. Look at Callaway. It’s stock has dropped 20% since July ($15.71 vs. $19.49), Golfsmith has faired even worse crash-diving 47% ($5.77 vs $10.95).

Two articles came to my attention on the golf equipment business recently: Cleveland Sale Appears Imminent and Huffy Corporation Sells Tommy Armour. Both appeared in GolfWeek Business. For leveraged buyout groups like the one that is selling Cleveland and the sporting goods conglomerate that is unloading Tommy Armour, golf isn’t fitting into their idea of making a profit.

Quicksilver, the current owner of Cleveland because of its acquisition of Rossignol skis in 2005, wants to dump it because the parent took its first annual loss in 15 years. Huffy, which acquired Tommy Armour, TearDrop, Ram, and Zebra when it purchased extreme sports manufacturer Gen X in 2002, later emerged from bankruptcy in 2005 and no longer thought golf fit into its future plans. Rumors are that Cleveland could be a TaylorMadeAdidas target, but nothing is official.

Last year it was sporting good retailers consolidating. Is 2007 the year for golf equipment manufacturers?

Oddly, nothing.

Annika is no Tiger. She’s great, don’t get me wrong, but “Annika, Incorporated” ain’t “Tiger, Inc.” Annika is everything a good golfer should be: intelligent, understated, polite, well-spoken and a great golfer. But she is not a great interview nor does she look hot in a swimsuit.

Tiger draws. And draws and draws and draws. He single-handedly made golf the big money sport that it is today. Annika, although dominant on a golf course, isn’t anything close to that off it. She has been pushed off the front pages of golf magazines to show Natalie Gulbis in a swimsuit and the continued meltdown of Michelle Wie.

Just look at Lorena Ochoa to see how little attention the top female golfers get in the mainstream golf media. I mean that girl has won three golf tournaments in a row this year, but she doesn’t speak English that well so we don’t really care. She’s won eight tournaments, including a major. I bet you didn’t know that. That fact alone makes my point in spades.

Once the happy couple decides on a wedding date, Annika will start to plan her retirement date.

The great golf seer has spoken.

What struck me as quite interesting was that the ad closed with “…and see our ad in Golf Magazine.” That made me rise up in my seat. Why did the advertiser mention Golf Magazine as the only place where the print ad was running? Is there some sort of connection between ED and golf? Why didn’t they mention Forbes, Fortune or Maxim? What about Rolling Stone, Sports Illustrated or Science? Don’t any of these publications’ readers have ED? Is it only those who read Golf Magazine that have this dreaded disease?

Perhaps we should thrust ourselves into a deeper understanding of the connection between golf and ED? Yes, I think we should.

A quick check of Golf Magazine’s 2006 media kit is very telling:

95% of the readership is male – VERY MALE
They have an average net worth of over $1 million – RICH
They have an average household income of $148,000 – RICH
They have played golf an average of 25 years – OLD
They play an average of 58 rounds per year – PLAY LOTS OF GOLF
83% are professional or managerial – IN MANAGEMENT

What do we have: rich old male managers that play too much golf and according to Viagra, they have an ED problem. Clearly a target rich market.

So, I think the conclusion we can draw from this is that playing too much golf (58 rounds/year mind you) leads to ED and so your choices are:

A) Stop playing golf. – NOT
B) Stop playing golf, take Viagra and still have sex. - NOT
C) Keep playing golf, take Viagra and still have sex. – POSSIBLE
D) Keep playing golf and stop having sex. - ???

Hmmmm…. don’t rush me, I’m still thinking about it.

In the span of two weeks he wins the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational by eight strokes, then he marches on to a convincing victory in the PGA Championship for his 59th tournament win. Saying that the greatest golfer in history was someone like Nicklaus, Hogan or Palmer will always be defended, but the strength of these arguments are rapidly weakening.

It is impossible to make straight-up comparisons between golfers of different generations if they’ve never played against each other. In the case of Tiger Woods, he is clearly the best golfer of this generation and will likely become the best golfer of any generation. Why?

Tiger Woods, has won at every level; from the juniors to the professional ranks. He has won in every condition, on every course, won from behind, with a lead, against the best in the world and against one-hit wonders. He doesn’t make mistakes, is relentless, has a higher gear when it is needed, makes the shots he should and makes the shots he shouldn’t. He has the aura and mystic that he is invincible (note the 13-0 when he has the lead in a major). He is photogenic, well-spoken and doesn’t get into personal trouble Tiger has had public personal tragedies and personal triumphs. He doesn’t have bad habits, doesn’t gamble away, doesn’t get caught in compromising situations.

He’s a saint and a marketing wunderkind. He is the unofficial spokeperson for golf. Unlike Michael Jordan, who arguably is the greatest basketball player in history, Tiger has to win all of these tournaments on his own. Jordan had a team around him.

Tiger plays a schedule that is probably half as active as most of his closest competitors and has now won his 13th major. Jack Nicklaus, considered the greatest golfer to date, won 18 majors with his last coming when he was 46. If Tiger just wins one major a year from now on, he will be 36 (ten years younger than Jack when he won his last). What does one do when you’ve won everything there is to win in golf?
It is obvious that Woods has crushed the spirit of his closest competitors. Ernie Els, once considered one of the best golfers in the world tells it this way: “The statistics will tell you, yes, it is over. But as a competitor, I can’t sit there and tell you it’s over. I can’t ever do that” (Remember, this was at the conclusion of the 3rd round).

Tiger will be the greatest golfer in history and competitors like Els, Mickelson, Singh, and Garcia will have to be content to say they were there to witness it firsthand.

How many majors does Tiger need to win before we can anoint him a saint?