Rickie Week At The Players Means...Long Form Stories!?

The lone negative of Rickie Fowler winning the 2015 Players in unbelievable fashion?

The youth-obsessed PGA Tour has bequeathed second-coming-of-Christ status on the week, riding Rickie like Kent Desormeaux on Exaggerator trying to catch Nyquist. Promos, more promos and undoubtedly on site "activation" that'll have his face plastered everywhere but on the ice sculpture in the Commissioner's buffet.

However, the win also allowed for a fascinating move into long form journalism, with D.J. Piehowski filing a lengthy profile and interactive piece for PGATour.com that's well worth a look. Just one highlight from the bio portion of the project that also includes graphics, embedded video and other goodies:

Rickie started to practice and play tournaments regularly, but on Wednesdays, he’d hit balls with his grandfather and hear stories about Taka's childhood, during which he was forced into a World War II internment camp for people of Japanese heritage.

Those moments with the man who introduced him to golf are the reason Rickie (whose middle name is Yutaka) cried after losing the Waste Management Phoenix Open in a playoff in February. It wasn’t because he missed out on a PGA TOUR victory; golfers lose far more tournaments than they win. It was because his grandfather, one of the 618,000 fans at TPC Scottsdale, had never seen him win in person.

Those moments led to Rickie getting his grandfather’s name tattooed in Japanese on the inside of his left bicep last year. They led to school projects and reports about Yutaka’s experience in the internment camp.

“I’ve never heard my dad talk about it and I’ve never heard Rickie talk about it,” Lynn says. “I think it’s possible Rickie could be the first person my dad gave those stories to.”

The epic Sunday finish also opened the door for Garry Smits to get more than a few inches of space in the Florida Times-Union to focus on Fowler's three times around the 17th hole.

On a day of extraordinary shot-making and putting from multiple contenders, Fowler’s three turns at No. 17 made the difference in his playoff victory over Kevin Kisner and Sergio Garcia to win the Players — and will be the defining moments in his victory, and to date, the most scintillating final round in tournament history.

A couple of nice meaty long-form stories got me to wondering where you feel we are with stories over say, 2000 words? With the reduction in print subscriptions and consumption, it was thought that long form could survive because the Internet was not worried about space. But then we realized that it's hard to hold attention spans online or on mobile devices.

Yet it seems to me that of late, more publications have been trying to bring back the long read, often with a dedicated sponsor. A few informal questions if you feel compelled...

A) Do you long for long form reads about golf related topics?

B) Do you reward a publication that publishes them with some clicks or a subscription? Or not think much about that?

C) Do you notice a sponsor if a story is brought to you by one advertiser?

D) Do any recent long form reads stand out as memorable?

Thanks class, happy Monday!

The Debate Over Golf Digest's Latest Cover Model Choice...

GolfChannel.com's Randall Mell writing about the negative LPGA reaction to Paige Spiranac's naming as a leading futurists puts me in a tough spot.

I work with both entities.

I will note that the GolfChannel.com readers have been almost as hard on that site for regular slideshows of WAGs or Spiranac coverage, while Golf Digest's readers on Instagram were a mix of cranky, profoundly saddened and profoundly inspired.

Our May issue just landed! It's dedicated to golf's futurists--the innovators and influencers who are pushing the boundaries of the game, from educational robotics to glow-in-the-dark agronomy. The eye-catching cover image, as modeled by @_paige.renee, is designed to convey this topic of futurism and innovation. 👊🏼 (📷 @yopeteryang)

A photo posted by Golf Digest (@golfdigest) on Apr 19, 2016 at 7:00am PDT

The Ancient Twitterer On Tweeting The Masters

Ed Sherman interviews Dan Jenkins for Poynter on Tweeting the Masters at 86.

I enjoyed this on Jim Murray:

Of your old colleagues and the all-time greats, who would have excelled at Twitter? Have to think Murray would have been pretty good.

Murray would have been great at Twitter. In fact, some of his columns were like reading a whole bunch of tweets.

A couple of samples from day one at the 2016 Masters. 

Bryson DeChambeau: 16 characters. Longest names of Masters champs: Jose Maria Olazabal (17), Seve Ballesteros going the full Severiano (20).

— Dan Jenkins (@danjenkinsgd) April 7, 2016

Jack Nicklaus told me this is the 59th Masters he's attended. He looked a little startled when I told him he was 7 down to me.

— Dan Jenkins (@danjenkinsgd) April 7, 2016

Today In Millennialism: PGA Tour "To GoPro The Game Of Golf"

I'm really looking forward to the onslaught of SkratchTV's GoPro's inside the PGA Tour ropes to capture the game for the only people who matter.

Judging by the efforts from the Waste Management pro-am, there will be moments but mostly reminders that golf is not snowboarding. Well, unless you include getting to watch a caddie rake a bunker from the rake's perspective (1:43 point if you are looking for what excites the only people who matter).

Daniel Roberts reports for Yahoo on the GoPro-SkratchTV-PGA Tour partnership that'll have hipsters taking their wide angle cameras inside the ropes during competition. Just not too close, hopefully.

Translation: Golf is going extreme. The sport sees potential to woo millennials with GoPro's dizzying, high-octane P.O.V. shots that the camera maker has traditionally brought to more extreme sports like skateboarding, snowboarding, BMX, and mountain biking. "We're intrigued," said Rick Anderson, the PGA Tour's executive vice president of media, in a press release, "to GoPro the game of golf."


What does that mean? For starters, expect to see the GoPro HERO cameras show up on the course—in as unobtrusive a way as possible. "We're not up to using drones yet, although there is a lot of discussion of that," says the Tour's senior vice president, Norb Gambuzza, in an interview with Yahoo Finance. "But there will be guys shooting with GoPros and doing things with camera placement and positioning that we have not done before. I think fans will look at it and say, 'Hmmm, what's going on over there?' We are always looking to push the envelope in how we shoot and distribute our content."

Here's that envelope-pushing moment from Wednesday:

Update on 2016-02-04 15:04 by Geoff

**Great to see the Tour's partner celebrating the activity banned by the Tour.

Remember, anything for the children, even the forbidden:

Taking home 3rd on our @wmphoenixopen countdown is a caddy race for the ages complete with head first slides.https://t.co/jPrw0b4DKB

— SkratchTV (@skratchTV) February 3, 2016

Back9 Network Planning Online Return, Expansion

Stephen Singer reports for the Hartford Courant on efforts by the failed television network Back9 to continue on as a website, app and email property, according to bankruptcy filings and confirned by CEO Charles Cox.

Singer writes:

Cox and co-founder Reid Gorman tapped $2 million from a group of investors, including Karl Krapek, former president and chief operating officer of United Technologies Corp., and Denis Nayden, managing partner of Oak Hill Capital Partners and former chairman and chief executive officer of GE Capital, the one-time financing unit of General Electric Co. They did not return calls seeking information on their roles in the return of Back9Network.

Back9Network executives acknowledged in the filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Hartford their failure to launch a profitable television network. They're now forming a "compelling online platform" of websites, a golf app and an email newsletter with 1.7 million subscribers, they said.

Anyone use the app cited by the network as key to its growth?

It's About Time: Tiger Opens Up To Lorne

Lorne Rubenstein may be golf's Barbara Walters after pulling off two incredible feats: getting a sitdown with Tiger Woods (at Woods Jupiter) seemingly without Steiny in the corner issuing a wrap-it-up-sign. More impressively, he gets all sorts of insights. Granted, I don't believe a few of them, but hey, it makes for great reading.

As always, I urge you to read the entire piece for context at Time's website. There's lots of great stuff on his ex and his kids that will pull at your heartstrings and make his accountant sleep (a little) better.

But more fun is the golf and media talk.

First comment I don't fully believe (Lorne in italics):

Do you watch golf?

I can’t remember the last time I watched golf. I can’t stand it. Unless one of my friends has a chance to win, then I like watching it. I watched Jason [Day] win the PGA. But it was on mute. It’s always on mute and I have some other game on another TV.

 Always on mute!

How do you feel about the way the media have covered you?

There’s no accountability in what they say. And what they say, it’s like it’s gospel, there’s no source behind it. Nothing like, yeah, I talked to X number of players, I talked to this player, this player, this player. It’s none of that. It’s jus, some of the announcers, they don’t even go on the golf course. And they look at a pin sheet from the booth, but they’ve never surveyed the golf course, even though the television coverage doesn’t come on until the afternoon. You have all that time to go walk the golf course, to see some of the early rounds, see what guys are doing, how they’re hitting it, how’s the course playing, is the wind coming up? All those different things that you could do. The only one who does that is Finchy [golf broadcaster and former PGA Tour pro Ian Baker-Finch].

I'm sure he meant to include Notah.

How do you handle the speculation about you?

One, you don’t listen to it. And two, in today’s world, you don’t go online.

You don’t read what’s written about you? Was there a time when you did?

Not really.

Eh-em...let's not forget just above you vented about what people are saying but you have the TV on mute and you don't read stuff. Go on...

And that has served me well. It has served me well. Like my dad said when I was young, Were any of these guys there? If anybody has any kind of perspective on it, it would be the caddy. He saw the shot, he understood what the circumstances were. Other than that, there’s nobody else. So what’s their take on it? Who cares? They weren’t there. They didn’t see how difficult it was, what’s going on.

Lorne asked another media question later on..

How would you characterize your relationship with the media over the years?

I have a lot of good friends in the media.

Pausing for laughter to die down in Hero World Challenge media center.

Guys I’ve gone out to dinner with on countless occasions. With respect.

Countless! With respect!

There’s also a flip side of people that I really don’t care for. Hey, they made their career being negative and being outlandish. They’ve made a career out of it. But that’s their take. They’ve almost created a character, per se.

Impressive he knows that without reading or listening.

Alright, let's get to a very interesting observation about today's greatest young crop of talent in the history of world athletics. Sounds like, even though he's not listening or reading, Tiger is understandably perplexed by the surprising lack of consistency from otherwise very talented modern golfers.

What’s it like for you sitting and not being able to compete against the current crop?

I don’t think you’ve played against any of them at full strength.
I haven’t. It’s interesting to see how the game has changed. In today’s game you don’t have to make cuts. And I see these guys miss so many cuts when they’re that good. To go out five times in a year and miss cuts, I just don’t see that. It doesn’t compute, because I haven’t done it. I think I’ve missed only 15 cuts in my career.

And Lorne also gets an admission from Tiger about how bad his short game woes got and how they even impacted him merely practicing at home.

What about in chipping, and those little shots you’ve missed or chunked?

That was a total technique, shifting away from [former swing coach Sean Foley’s] motion to going back to our older motion. It was completely different, what Sean teaches and what I was trying to go back to are polar 180.

Can you describe what he was teaching and what you were trying to do?

What I can say is it was a tough time, being out in my backyard and not being able to make contact with the golf ball.

Update on 2015-12-03 18:38 by Geoff

**Rubenstein was on Morning Drive to discuss the interview with Gary Williams. There was also a discussion after the interview.

Update on 2015-12-04 05:49 by Geoff

**Michael Bamberger says "this interview is different. It’s the Woods I have long suspected was there." And writes:

Woods almost never gives serious, long, revealing one-on-one sit-down interviews. (Or ever, really.) This appears to be one. With Woods, everything in his public life is so orchestrated, there was reason to be suspicious about Woods’s motives here. (Or there was for me.) It was a relief to learn that Rubenstein simply contacted Woods’s people, requested an interview and, after a little back-and-forth, there was one. Rubenstein told GOLF.com that the interview lasted two-and-a-half hours and was conducted at Woods’s new restaurant in Jupiter, Fla.