Tiger Finds His Ball, Other Nike Guys In Hoarding Mode

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In reading Doug Ferguson's story reporting Tiger's golf ball endorsement deal with Bridgestone, it's fun to read just how neurotic players remain about the ball they put into play.

I'm enjoying the thought of Brooks Koepka parking his cars outside the garage because of his Nike golf ball hoarding now that they are out of the business...

By choosing a new golf ball, Woods went a different direction from two of Nike's highest-ranked players. Rory McIlroy and Brooks Koepka said they have asked Nike to set aside as many golf balls as possible.

"I have about two to three years' worth," Koepka said in the Bahamas.

David Dusek's Golfweek.com story on the signing of Woods says Bridgestone ran the numbers, Japanese-style.

Corey Consuegra, Bridgestone’s senior director of marketing, said Monday evening that his company has an internal philosophy based on a Japanese phrase, Genbutsu-Genba.

“What that means is that we make fact-based decisions, decisions that are based on data,” he said. “So when we looked into the opportunity to be a partner with Tiger Woods, we studied closely and learned (in focus groups) that our brand perception increases by 50 percent when he is connected to our brand, and the purchase intent of our consumers goes up based on the nature of his credibility.”

Costco's Kirkland Golf Ball "Out Of Stock" Until December 20th

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Thanks to reader Steve for Erik Matuszewski's Forbes follow-up on sales of Costco's knock-off ball zooming from shelves large crates for $29.99 per TWO dozen. A date of December 20th is listed as the earliest re-stocking of a ball that has tested well.

Even more remarkably, folks are trying to resell them at a premium price.

The balls, not surprisingly, have popped up on auction sites like eBay, with listings of $48.99 for a dozen, $90 for two dozen or $189.99 for 48 balls. Those aren't wholesale club prices there, folks. Costco has declined to say how many of the Kirkland balls have been sold since the launch or generally give any detailed information about the balls at all. It's actually not a bad approach; the company is letting (positive) word of mouth speak for the ball, the same as it has for, say, its high-quality wines.

It will be interesting to see how long this phenomenon continues until (or if) the lack of elite-player usage undermines some of the excitement.

Wilson Submitted (Non-Conforming) Driver To USGA Four Days Before It Hit Shelves

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From reality show winner to rocky retail road, the Wilson Triton driver did not pass USGA conformity testing in all but one model.

More fascinating for those of us getting to see the difficulties of bringing a product to the marketplace quickly, Martin Kaufmann's latest Golfweek follow-up on the saga notes the USGA seeing trouble the moment samples arrived in Far Hills, and includes this:

Spitzer said the USGA did not receive Triton test samples until Nov. 21, just four days before the product went on sale. He said the turnaround time for testing products is “about 14 days.”

Spitzer described the modified Tritons it received this week as “a separate submission.”

“We have to go through the full test, and we have not completed the full test,” he said. He added that under an expedited review, the modified Tritons could be placed on the Dec. 19 list if they’re determined to be conforming.

SBJ's Predictions For 2017: Look For FedExCup Changes, No New PGA Tour Broadcast Deal

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There are a couple of intriguing insider notes from SBJ's well-connected John Ourand related to PGA Tour business in this 2017 predictions column.

9. No new broadcast deal for PGA Tour

It’s no secret that the PGA Tour will have conversations with CBS and NBC about opening up their broadcast deals. But the tour knows that there’s no big deal to be had here. The big media money comes in 2021 when the PGA Tour’s cable rights with Golf Channel are up. Until then, look for the PGA Tour to cut interesting streaming deals with companies like Facebook and Twitter as it studies the landscape before its cable negotiations kick in.

The column also includes a note on Amazon's desire to get into sports this year, though Ourand cited the emerging streaming network as targeting other sports such as tennis.

10. FedEx Cup changes coming

There’s been a lot of talk inside the tour about shortening the FedEx Cup so that it would not run up against college and pro football games in September. The tour will decide this year that it will conclude the FedEx Cup on Labor Day weekend starting in 2019. The knock-on effect from the compressed August schedule will see the PGA Championship moved from August to May and the Players Championship moved from May to March. That will start the golf season with a lot of momentum with one big event a month (from the Players to the Masters to the PGA Championship).

I'm still struggling to see how this works for the PGA of America in two big ways: agronomically and financially. A May date all but rules out several markets they visit or want to revisit (Rochester, Minneapolis, middle-of-nowhere Wisconsin), while the August date is actually a decent one given the fairly uncrowded landscape.

From a historical perspective, giving up the August date for the low-rated, lowly-anticipated FedExCup also seems short-sighted.

On the plus side, returning The Players to March beefs up a Florida swing already feeling a little depleted by the elimination of the Doral stop, while a May PGA Championship would open up a few markets of interest.

Reality Show: Wilson's Driver Ruled Non-Conforming

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Martin Kaufmann, who recently detailed the issues involving getting the Wilson Triton on the USGA's conforming club list, now reports non-conformity status for all but one the tour player model of the winning-reality show products.

From his Golfweek.com report:

The company said in a media release mid-day Monday that the company is working with the USGA to address the design elements that led to the club being rejected from the conforming list. Wilson said the USGA will review fixes to those elements this week. Wilson also said in the statement that it hopes a modified product could be ruled conforming as early as Dec. 19.

The USGA would not specify the reason the club was ruled nonconforming. In its release, Wilson said there were two problems: an aesthetic issue involving the size of the sole plate, and the springiness of the face when the adjustable weights are used in a specific configuration.

Kaufmann notes that most retailers had already pulled the club until conforming status had been bequeathed on the club, and that Wilson hopes to have USGA-approved adjustments made as early as December 19th.

Tiger Moves Bridgestone's Needle, Will It Continue?

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David Dusek looks at the attention Tiger Woods brought to the clubs he played in the Bahamas last week and in a strange twist, he might have brought more quality attention to those brands because he's not being paid by them. Will it continue when/if he signs with a company? After all, Nike probably couldn't sell a putter if they tried after Woods made clear he couldn't wait to put his old Scotty Cameron back in the bag.

From Dusek's Golfweek.com story, quoting Bridgestone's Corey Consuega:

Consuegra said that having staff Tour players such as Brandt Snedeker and Matt Kuchar is extremely valuable, but Woods’s use of a Bridgestone ball created an immediate impact. In fact, Consuegra said Bridgestone’s website received about the same amount of traffic last Monday through Friday that it did in the entire third quarter of this year (July-September), and most of those visitors were going to the Tour B330S page.

“It changes the way we can tell the consumers and the public how good we are in the golf ball category,” Consuegra said. “We get outspent by our biggest competitors, but (Woods is) one of the best players to ever play the game, period, and he could have selected any golf ball on the market today he wanted, and he chose to go with the B330S.”

Woods Switched Back To His Scotty The Day Nike Quit The Equipment Business

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We know players make club switches to appease sponsors and face bag requirements. But most club companies ultimately trust a player to do what is best for their game if they are struggling. Tiger Woods has never been woeful on the greens. But before his layoff, he wasn't as good as he once was.

Given that Tiger Woods won 13 of 14 majors with his trusty Scotty Cameron Newport 2 putter, his response to a question about switching back to it today prompted an uncharacteristically blunt answer.

From Will Gray's full item on this fascinating insider issue.

“The day that we (Nike) were no longer a part of the hard goods side,” Woods said when asked when he put his old putter back into play.

Brandel Chamblee was asked about his expectations for the weekend but instead noted that Woods has moved into a unique place where he can pick whatever he wants in his bag. But the question may now linger: why didn't one of the greatest players of all time and richest golfers in history have the freedom to putt with his trusty flatstick?

Bloomberg: "To Make Golf Fun, Just Add a Nightclub"

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Topgolf gets the Bloomberg treatment and while there have been many profiles of the indoor-golf-driving-range-hipster-21st-Century-bowling-alley, Ira Boudway's story features plenty of fresh anecdotes.

A couple of highlights, starting with this on how CEO Erik Anderson, founder of private equity fund WestRiver Group brought the idea stateside and made a key move: TV's in the hitting bays.

In 2009, Anderson and a group of U.S. investors bought Topgolf’s technology for an undisclosed fee and decided to overhaul the floor plan for future locations. They added a third level, tripling the size of each venue to 65,000 square feet; replaced the buckets with motion-sensing ball dispensers; and, in a key change, put TVs and lounges—effectively, the entire sports bar experience—at each bay. “We realized that this was really an integrated entertainment and sports experience,” Anderson says.

There was also this on the financing side...

In September the company lined up $275 million in financing to build 7 to 10 locations a year. (Each costs $20 million to $25 million to open.) “We think there’s room for 100 or so in the U.S. and an equal amount globally,” Anderson says, though other than the original locations, the company hasn’t yet opened any outside the U.S. Revenue last year was about $300 million; this year it will be about a half-billion dollars.