PGA Tour: Clinton Was Our Idea!
/Yesterday when John Strege reported Joe Ogilvie's suggestion that Bill Clinton and his Global Initiative could help jumpstart the Bob Hope, he clearly ruffled feathers in Ponte Vedra, where they oxford shirt set rolled up their sleeves and spent Friday evening crafting a statement to let the scribes in La Quinta know they were already on the Clinton initiative!
"The Commissioner and the PGA Tour have been in discussions over the past several months with the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative regarding a broad partnership that would involve the Clinton Foundation's longstanding commitment to improving lives with the Tour's 'Together, Anything's Possible' charitable initiative. This includes the potential for leveraging the Bob Hope Classic as a focal point for this partnership. We would like to stress these discussions are in progress and any speculation as to the details would be premature. When completed, a detailed overview will be provided."
The tour has no other comment.
So let's say this was an idea the tour has been working on, and Ogilvie heard it and mentioned it to a writer as a possible way to reinvigorate the event. Said writer runs with it and it appears as a blog item on a Friday afternoon.
Or, maybe considering the dearth of creative ideas emanating from Ponte Vedra and the outside-the-box tendencies of Ogilvie, just maybe he had this idea and maybe even mentioned it to someone at the tour.
Either way, don't folks comfortable in their own skin just let such a thing go and keep on negotiating with the Clinton people to, uh, "leverage the Bob Hope Classic as a focal point for this partnership"?
Why issue a release that in no way provides you negotiating leverage or benefits the tour in any way? It's not as if there was a controversy to squelch here. Except for possible ego bruising over credit.
