Elk, Slugger Clean Up At The Annual Huggy Awards

John Huggan's annual Huggy's spotlight some of the more dubious on and off-course acts from 2013, including the R&A's peculiar softening of Muirfield's greens (it all worked out ok though...), Steve Elkington's Twittering and PGA Tour VP Slugger's White's views on the World Cup setup of Royal Melbourne.

Regarding the last mention, Huggan writes about Slugger's take on arguably the purest golf on the planet at Royal Melbourne:

Mr White was apparently not impressed by what he saw there, however. The best, most interesting and most strategically challenging course in the southern hemisphere just wasn’t up to scratch, especially around the greens.

As far as ol’ Slugger was concerned, not enough long grass circled the putting surfaces. He wanted to eliminate any need for imagination, flair and feel and replace it all with a succession of hacks/gouges, the only option left to players when rough encroaches close to the fringes. In other words, White wanted every player reduced to the same one-choice level.

Truly, this was a revealing statement, one that goes a long way to explaining why so many events on the so-often one-dimensional PGA Tour look so (un)remarkably similar. Whatever, Slugger is a worthy recipient of his first Huggy.