Loose Impediments

Tiger's Real Test

If you had told me that a golfer had gotten into a single-vehicle accident at 2AM, I immediately would have thought of John Daly. Or perhaps Arjun Atwal. 

The last person I would have thought would have been Tiger Woods, simply because he doesn't lose control—of anything, from his image to his interaction with the public to his game. Of course, there have been momentary outbursts of temper, and perhaps his emotional side contributed to his accident, around which numerous questions still swirl.

On the course, Tiger has been able to gather himself after his brief losses of control and go on to win, more often than not. But now, he faces a situation that is way beyond his sphere of influence, especially as he has basically gone into hiding, digging himself in a hole from he can't just bound from with a quip and a smile, a commercial or a 20-foot birdie putt on the final hole.

To me, this accident and his handling of the aftermath are Tiger's real test of who he is. He has proved himself as a golfer, yet we know very little about what he is really like. Anybody can come out looking as good as Tiger when he's in control and winning. But we have yet to see him under real duress. 

Will this accident affect his image and legacy? It depends. But no matter what happens, I think how he behaves in the coming days will say a lot more about Tiger the man than hundreds of golf tournaments ever could.

2010 LPGA Schedule: Winners and Losers

No wonder early favorites Donna Orender and Pete Bevacqua withdrew their names as candidates for the LPGA commissioner gig that went to Michael Whan. Because the 2010 schedule that was just released reflects the long road ahead for Whan.

There are 23 events with dates (with a Korean event TBD); two of the 23 have dates but no courses. After a first glance, here are the winners and losers of the schedule. OK, so I'm a little late to the party, but considering that the first event is nearly three months away, this should keep. 

Golf in Rio?

What does today's announcement of the 2016 Summer Olympics being awarded to Rio de Janeiro mean for golf's chances of inclusion in those Games? Perhaps nothing, but I have a feeling it certainly can't help.

The other three finalists, Chicago, Madrid and Tokyo, all have numerous golf courses, not to mention a long golf history and an understanding of the game among its citizens. Any sort of golf tournament in those cities was bound to produce a well-attended (by both players and fans) event at a worthy course. 

There are no such assurances in Rio. In our 20-year history, we have written about golf in Brazil exactly once, which I suspect is more than any other U.S. golf publication. I know nothing about golf in Brazil, but a little search has turned up two decent sites in Rio: Gavea Golf and Country Club and Itanhanga Golf Club. The photos seem OK, but the layouts don't compare courses like Cog Hill or Kawana, which would have been great Olympic courses. 

I'm not sure how it works, but Brazil's lack of a golf culture certainly has to play a part in the decision of whether golf will be included in 2016. We'll know in a week, when the IOC announces which two sports will be included from among seven candidates: golf, baseball, karate, roller sports, rugby, softball and squash.

Of course, golf is just a tiny reason for choosing an Olympics host, but you have to believe that for those with a stake in golf's inclusion in the games, Rio was last on their ballots. 

Tough Road Ahead for Tiger

Tiger Woods has taken us on quite a journey during the past 10-plus years. The entire time, his North Star has been Jack Nicklaus' mark of 18 major victories. 

At first, the record seemed impossible to break. Then it seemed like a foregone conclusion. Now, with 14 majors, he has passed a crucial marker, one at which the climb gets much steeper for most golfers. 

It has been 12 years since Tiger's first major victory at the 1997 Masters, and despite golfers' reputations for longevity (see Tom Watson's performance at the British Open), it has proven to be very difficult for most players to win majors consistently after passing the 12-year anniversary of their first major win.

The fact is, as in other sports, golfers have fairly short windows of greatness. Arnold Palmer won his seven majors in a six-year span. Ben Hogan won his majors in seven years, and Byron Nelson and Tom Watson won their majors over eight years. Seve Ballesteros and Nick Faldo both had their peaks in less than a decade. Even the paragon of longevity, Sam Snead, won his last major 12 years after winning his first.

Only seven players have won multiple majors after crossing the 12-year threshold, which is exactly where Tiger stands now. The outlier is Nicklaus, who won six majors after his 12th year and had the longest span (24 years) between his first and last major wins. (See the list below for more.)

The Best Rees-torations

Rees Jones was helping to renovate courses well before he became a golf architect. He would attend U.S. Opens with his father, Robert Trent Jones Sr., and measure the length of drives so his father would know where to position hazards when renovating Open courses like Baltusrol, Oak Hill and Southern Hills.

Decades later, Jones has become renowned for his own redos, 11 of which have hosted post-renovation majors. That doesn't include other projects like Duke Golf Club (pictured) and East Lake, the host of this week's Tour Championship. Here are Jones' best renovations.

Hefty Green Fees

While NBC was all but declaring Cowboys Stadium (left) the eighth wonder of the world last night during the Cowboys-Giants game, I couldn't help but thinking that at $1.15 billion, it's not even the most expensive stadium to open—this year!

Of course, that honor goes to the new Yankee Stadium, which cost $1.5 billion. And that amount was second to the new Wembley Stadium in London, which cost nearly $1.6 billion when it opened two years ago. (That figure should have an asterisk, since the weak dollar had a lot do with the inflation of that amount.)

Since we've crossed the 10-figure threshold for building arenas of play, it seems to me that some of golf's priciest courses seem like bargains in comparison. After the jump, a list of some of the most expensive courses ever built.

Bally of Sin

LINKS Magazine doesn't do golf course rankings. They're hard to get just right, and you invariably wind up having the owners, members, pros, architects, greenskeepers, waiters, etc., of every course except one (No. 1) mad at you. 

But like anyone else, I enjoy looking at the various lists to see how my personal evaluations of these courses compared to these rankings, which a great man once referred to as "a collective guess, an objective average of subject opinions."

That said, I fully expect the 7,294-yard Ballyhack Golf Club outside Roanoke, Virginia, to be on the short list of the best courses of the year. Architect Lester George built some dramatic holes on former farmland. After the jump, some more pics to get the award season started. (Click on the images for full-size versions.) 

Tiger's Three-Week Strategy

After Tiger Woods' slow start in the U.S. Open followed by a flameout in the British Open, the conventional wisdom is that he wasn't tournament-ready when the bell rang on Thursday. And while Tiger likes to say that he just wants to be in the mix down the stretch, an examination of his major championship performances shows that the first round is crucial in determining whether he wins. The numbers, after the jump, show why.

Still One of the Best

For four days and 71 holes, the drama at the 2009 British Open built perfectly. As if on cue, golf's leading men and potential spoilers exited the stage in succession: Phil Mickelson before the tournament, Tiger Woods on Friday, Steve Marino on Saturday and on Sunday, Ross Fisher with a quad on the 5th, Matthew Goggin with three consecutive bogeys from the 14th through 16th hole and Lee Westwood with back-to-back bogeys on the 15th and 16th.

That left Tom Watson to finish out what would have been the greatest golf tournament in history. But while the alternate ending was heartbreaking, it shouldn't diminish what Watson accomplished in what will be his next-to-last British Open, unless the R&A changes the rules and lets him play past the age of 60.

As sports psychologists like to point out, it's about the process, not the outcome. And the process, like watching a real-life "Field of Dreams," was what enthralled the golf world for four days and still makes the 2009 British Open one of the greatest golf tournaments ever played.

As we recover from the tremendous buildup and the astonishing turn of events of the tournament's final hour, here is my first stab at placing the event among the 10 greatest British Opens ever played. The list after the jump.

Ten to Watch

One thing I enjoy about watching the British Open, especially during the early rounds, is the strange names that always pop up on the leader board. After a steady diet of Cink, Perry and Toms, I'm ready for a dose of Bhullar, Oosthuizen and Echenique.

Sometimes, those unfamiliar names never come off the board. While the last four Opens have gone to top players (successive back-to-back wins by Tiger Woods and Padraig Harrington), there have been three unlikely winners in the past 10 years: Paul Lawrie in 1999, Ben Curtis in 2003 and Todd Hamilton in 2004.

They were almost joined in 2002 by another dark horse, Thomas Levet. The Frenchman bogeyed Muirfield's 18th hole in the final round to fall into a four-way playoff, won by Ernie Els.

Given this history and the unpredictable nature of links golf, it is likely that there will be another relative nobody in contention this week at Turnberry. His name may be little-known when it appears on the leader board, but it may not remain that way by week's end.

In that vein, here are 10 dark-horse players under the age of 30. You can take your much-fussed-over youngsters like Rory McIlroy, Anthony Kim and Ryo Ishikawa. I'll take my chances with this group, from which someone is just as likely as the marquee names to make an impact on the tournament by week's end.

The full list after the jump: