Week In Review, Jan 29-Feb 4: A Bit of Everything

John Huggan kicked off the week by chatting with R&A secretary Peter Dawson, who elaborated on the R&A's interest in square grooves, prompting reader Smolmania to write: "Do they really think that my 64 degree Dave Pelz wedge is a danger to the game? Or, is it the fact that at age 48 I can now hit my driver 30 yards further in the air than I could at age 35? It's the balls you dopes!"

There was also a story of Dawson traveling to Turnberry soon to help make changes to the storied Open venue, causing Ned Ludd to ask for a minor rewrite of Mike Aitken's story.

Huggan also looked at the future of the European Tour and the state of the PGA Tour, leading to an interesting discussion and post from the Big K.

We tried to figure out Peter Kostis's comments during the Buick final round telecast. There was also this week's driving distance watch and a look at Tiger's flogging at Torrey Pines.

I had some fun looking at the player-architect comments made while visiting their Dubai designs, and reader Jay offered memories of life in Dubai.

News of the Walker Cuppers at the White House prompted a mild college athletics dispute to break out.

Speaking of non-stories, there was the uh "news" that Riviera has requested the 2009 Presidents Cup, but based on the quotes from the PGA Tour rep, this isn't something they are taking seriously.

A story on the lack of regulation in bowling prompted some great insights from reader Al.

Thanks to reader Chris for helping me find Tiger's fascinating remarks about the demise of shotmaking. They appeared in a Jaime Diaz Golf Digest story.

Another week and more thoughts on the PGA Tour schedule, this time the reality hit home that there isn't much "World" in the World Golf Championships.

I thought reader Pete offered a cool, though logistically difficult idea to spice things up: "Make it like the America's Cup in sailing. The year's winner gets to select a host course in his country for one of next year's events. Even more exciting, let the winner pick a course anywhere in the world to have one of the events. Limitations: a pre-set course list to choose from, and you can't choose a course for which you were involved with the design. Now, THAT's got some zip to it. Ernie Els wins, and we're off to South Africa for a tourney! How's that for excitement? Best of all: With only a year's notice, the courses could only be mangled so much, and would not get US Open-ified."

On USGA Jetgate, I wrote about the ramifications of this, Golf World ran a note acknowleding this site's report and I posed questions for those attending the annual meeting, though the follow ups from readers were much better than mine.

Jim Achenbach's Golfweek story on two sets of rules raised a few questions on this end, but it doesn't mean we are not grateful for Achenbach's passion on the issue (and willingness to take chances).