Weekly Long Drive Contests?

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Chris Lewis says the Tour should have a weekly long drive contest to generate a little buzz, and he looks at how they used to have such events at Tour events.

I remember while doing research on Riviera's history that they used to have one at the L.A. Open, I believe down on No. 17 certain years. And in 1941 there was a long drive contest at the LA Memorial Coliseum. Babe Zaharias competed, as did Hogan who hit drives of 260, 256 and 259 yards to win. Babe hit two 240 yarders and one 235, returning to the site of her Olympic gold medal winning performance.

Today, if they tried to hit from the peristyle end  they might think about hitting out of the stadium!

"I Have A Theory"

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It'll never be confused with Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" proclamation, but the mid-fourth round car wreck at Torrey Pines prompted Gary McCord to note that the play looked "like my buddies at home," which then had Peter Kostis announcing "I have a theory, I have a theory."

You keep building golf courses like this thing and you're going to breed a generation of 6'5" 240 pound golfers where power is everything. This golf is brutal...

Bobby Clampett chimed in at this point to remind us that the course is 7,600 yards at sea level, so we didn't get to hear Kostis expand on the theory. 

So, was he...

A) Going to say that the architects and developers are to blame for the current state of course setup and the way golf is played (flogging/ugly)?

B) Going to say that architects are to blame for the power game? 

C) Going to say that the emergence of 6'5" 240 pound players is the result of equipment that provides significant benefits for those who are taller and stronger? 

I'm guessing answer was NOT (C). So let's add architects to the better athletes/agronomy/workout programs/grooves/loft etc... rationale for doing nothing that might impact the sacred ball-driver synergy.

The Bashers vs. The Artists

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SI's Chris Lewis takes on the Bubba Watson and his eye-opening drives, but instead of focusing on Bubba and what car he drives or what he thinks of yoga, Lewis actually explores the concept of how the game is played (really!). Even more scary? He considers the ramifications.

Lewis says the main 2006 PGA Tour plotline will be "the Bashers vs. the Artists."

Subtitle: In which the ever-growing ranks of PGA Tour dogleg-cutting, tree-flying, dimpled-ball bombardiers finally and forever vanquish the ever-shrinking number of short-hitting, fairway-dwelling, shot-shaping sissies.

Besides Bubba, he looks at other bashers and artists. And he explores why John Holmes changes his Tour name to J.B. 

Reporter: Why go from John B. [Holmes] at Q-school to J.B. [Holmes] here?

Holmes: You know the answer to that.

"Big-Hitting Rookies Are Blowing Game Apart"

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David Davies in the Telegraph writes about the "explosion" of "huge hitting" in golf, focusing on Bubba Watson's recent exploits. Lots of the numbers I've hit you over the head with here.

This was an interesting perspective:

Pat Ruddy, the eminent and amiable Irish golf course architect, is appalled by all this. "After these guys have driven the ball they have consumed over 70 per cent of the golf course. There's nothing left. The entire values of the game are being attacked by one club, the driver.

"What are we, as architects, to do? How about growing long grass from the green back towards the tee, so that they have to hit a wedge first and then a three-wood into the green? Or have 10-mile long courses?

"These tee shots have wiped out five or six clubs from the bag."

Bubba Watson won't care, of course, and neither will Jason Gore, but the rest of us should be mighty concerned about the threat to golf as we have known it.

Bubba Numbers

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This unbylined Shark.com story looks at Bubba Watson and his prodigious driving distances.

While David Toms won the Sony Open by five shots for his 12th career PGA Tour win, it was Bubba who stole the show. It wasn't just his career-best fourth-place finish, thanks to a final-round 65, as much as Bubba's rare ability to hit tee shots into the next time zone. He averaged an eye-popping 347.5 yards at Sony.

How much of a sideshow was it? At the par-5 18th hole on Saturday, Bubba out drove playing partner Fred Funk by, oh, about 140 yards. Imagine what that was like to witness. "He's already pretty small," Bubba said of Funk.

Four of Bubba's drives in the final round were measured at more than 360 yards, including a 398-yarder at the 12th hole. Even more amazingly, he managed to hit 11-of-14 fairways during a week when the field averaged hitting just 45 percent of the fairways. 

And They Wonder Why Vijay...

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...won't come to the press tent?

Some questions for David Toms following his Sony Open win. 

Q. Your pattern has been other than the Match Play to typically win more in the middle of the year, is there anything that you can pinpoint as to why you won so early this year?

Q. You're pretty good with the lead going into the final round, are you aware of that? Is there anything to that that gets you...

Q. Maybe following up to that question and your answer, it wasn't an epiphany that all of the sudden you decided you wanted to win golf tournaments. What made that change and when did you come to realize that?

Q. You talked a month ago about the way you won at Match Play last year and frankly the way you won this week and what you said then was "I'd like to be able to do that more often." What does it take to do that more often? Are you getting any clue on that and do you think you're capable of it?

Q. Do you pay attention to your World Ranking?

Q. Seven inches on the first hole?

DAVID TOMS: Seven inches on the first hole? On No. 1? No, no, I had about 12 feet.