Brandel Likely To Get A Visit From Camp Ponte Vedra Police
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There were new set pieces (more cactus!) and a little more spunk in this year's State of the Pro Game discussion from Tucson. The first by-product of last year's marriage between NBC and Golf Channel managed to address the everyday game in a rushed final segment last year and though they didn't get that far this year, they got through the tedious Tiger talk in one segement before saying stuff that must have had the monitors in Ponte Vedra picking up the red phone.
There were the belly putter/pro-bifurcation arguments from Brandel Chamblee and Nick Faldo, which if presented to a jury would supersede anything coming from the governing bodies' case for one set of rules.
FALDO: “It’s called a golf swing, not a golf anchor. If the amateurs – for the enjoyment of the game, let them do whatever they like. But for professionals, I think we should start looking at all our rules, or quite a few on the equipment, like the size of the driver face.”
CHAMBLEE: “I am all for two sets of rules for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is eliminating the long putter in the professional ranks and allows – to Nick’s point – to provide a forum which allows you to actually control the motion of the putter without nerves or feel or touch actually affecting the motion….So they could make the game simultaneously more interesting at the professional level, more interesting for us to call it and more fun for the recreational golfer if they would do this.”
Chamblee also advocated bifurcation to the make the professional game more interesting, words that ten years ago would have gotten him a 30-day suspension, or, at the very least, marched off the set in a David Leadbetter Swing Link.
The size of a golf club, the moment of inertia, the size of the head is limited in the professional and amateur ranks. You should draw it back in the professional ranks, let them make the club as big as they want in the amateur ranks and again to your point, Johnny, the spring effect, they could lower that in the professional ranks. Every hundredth of a point they lower it, is worth five yards when you swing it 100 miles an hour.
So they could make the game simultaneously more interesting at the professional level, more interesting for us to call it and more fun for the recreational golfer if they would do this. The average golfer hits the ball 195 yards; they need bigger heads; they need spring effect; they need long putters. You want to grow the game? Let them have fun and do it.
But it was Brandel's resounding shoot-down of the Commissioner's Q-School-killing "fiscal year" schedule that will earn him a visit from Oxford shirt-wearing men armed with corporate-logoed leather folios.
If I was a betting man, I would bet this is a done deal and it's going to happen. And frankly I think it's quite sad. Every year there's one or two examples of a guy coming out of school or making it through Q‑School and having a huge effect.
Case in point, Y.E. Yang was the last guy to get his tour card in 2008 and won a PGA Championship in 2009.
Another case in point, Sang‑Moon Bae, he's here, he's playing. Now, tip your cap to him, he came over and went to Q‑School. But would he have come over and gone to Q‑School if he knew that it would necessitate a year in the Minor Leagues before he could get out and play the PGA TOUR. He won the Japanese Money List last year, that's millions of dollars last year and won his National Championship in Korea. Is he going to forego all that to come over here and play the Nationwide Tour? He is a big part of golf, now; and a big part of this tournament, now. You're talking about eliminating an opportunity for players that don't even have a vote on the issue. I understand what the PGA TOUR is trying to do, acquiesce to the demands of a sponsor but personally I think it's short‑sighted.
Short-sighted? Actually, that's one of the nicer things said about this "concept."
