Loose Impediments

The King and His Court

OK, now we know that Pat Perez can get just as hot with his golf clubs as with his temper. At the 50th Bob Hope Classic hosted by Arnold Palmer*, his rounds of 61 and 63, which set a new PGA Tour record for the first 36 holes, were downright rude to the tournament host, especially considering the 61 came at the PGA West Palmer course.

At any other event, shooting 124 in the first two rounds would give a player a huge lead. But at the Hope, Perez was just two shots ahead and there were NINE players within five shots. Low scoring has always been a tradition at the Hope, where the courses are relatively easy (the Palmer course measures just 6,950 yards), greens are soft and the weather is as perfect as inside a dome.

Just 403 Votes Short

The Baseball Hall of Fame announced their latest inductees, and scanning the list of names following the newly immortalized Rickey Henderson and Jim Rice, I saw that Jay Bell, a middle infielder who played for five teams, received two votes—403 shy of the 75 percent needed to make it to Cooperstown. (Actually, what's incredible is that he got two votes at all.) His lack of support means his name comes off the ballot, but based on a single day, May 5, 1997, I'll include his name as a write-in candidate for another Hall—the World Golf Hall of Fame—when I make my selections later this year.*

Overlooked Genius

I have found that there is a pretty significant range of knowledge among golfers when it comes to golf courses and architects. While Bill Coore is highly regarded by aficionados, the name usually draws a blank stare from the average golf fan, who may offer a glint of recognition only after the mention of Coore's famous design partner, Ben Crenshaw. (And chances are, they know Crenshaw the player, not as an architect.)

For these casual observers, much of their knowledge of golf course architecture is determined by what they see on TV. American golfers expect to see wall-to-wall green at their courses largely because of the standard set by Augusta National during the Masters, the most widely viewed tournament of the year. There are other examples:

• Pete Dye had built some pretty good courses, but he didn't become famous until Jerry Pate threw him into the lake beside TPC Sawgrass' 18th green after winning the 1982 Players Championship.
• Very few people can name an original course built by Rees Jones, but everybody knows that he is the "Open Doctor" who has renovated numerous U.S. Open (and PGA Championship) courses.
• Gil Hanse is poised to be an A-Lister, but his star didn't begin to rise until he received praise for his renovation of TPC Boston during the telecast of the 2007 Deutsche Bank Championship.
• Even with the 0.7 rating of the made-for-TV Kiwi Challenge, far more people were exposed to Tom Doak being interviewed about his New Zealand course Cape Kidnappers than have played his masterpiece, Oregon's Pacific Dunes.

This List? It Was a Shoe-In

As a teenager, I worked at my dad's sneaker store, so by osmosis, I became pretty familiar with shoes. (As well as, unfortunately, dirty socks of all kinds. This was in the days when salespeople actually found the shoes for you and helped you put them on instead of leaving you to forage through piles of boxes. I am just an outsider in the shoe business now, but isn't this current system actually more work for the staff, who now have to tidy up the strewn boxes at the end of the day? On the other hand, they no longer have to be exposed to dirty socks, so I guess it's a push. What I really didn't comprehend was how people couldn't muster the effort to put on clean socks, especially when they knew they were going shoe-shopping. You would imagine this would apply mostly to kids, but a surprising number of adults were also guilty.)

The best part of the job was that I was always the first kid in school with the cool new pair of sneakers like the first Air Jordans. (This status sort of made up for all the Al Bundy jokes I had to endure. My favorite was the Nike Terminators, a pair of which I still have somewhere and used to break out every once in a while. They were always conversation starters, but now that Nike and others picked up on the retro appeal and have reissued the Terminator and other classics, I feel the appeal has been cheapened.

I bring up this backstory because unless you've been Rod Blagojevich's lawyer or have had the misfortune to have entrusted Bernard Madoff with your or your charity's money, footwear has been a major topic of conversation in the past week. In fact, shoes have never been discussed this much unless you were a Sex and the City cultist fan.

I am talking, of course, of Muntader al-Zeidi, the Iraqi journalist who threw his size 10s at President George W. Bush during a press conference.

Continuing this theme of notable footwear, you'll find nine other famous and infamous shoes throughout history in addition to al-Zeidi's after the jump. (Don't worry, there are some golf shoes on the list.) Why did I compile this list? You could say the subject runs through my sole.

Move Over, Rocco

Since the U.S. Open, Rocco Mediate has been living the life of a major champion. "Walking to dinner last night," he said on the eve of the PGA Championship at Oakland Hills, "one guy stopped the car on the street, sent his son over. I signed the autograph and he got back in the car. It was kind of freaky, actually.

"It's different, totally different. It was hard, especially the week or two after. I don't think I slept hardly at all."

One-of-a-Kind Jim

In our July/August issue, we ran a short profile of Jim Benepe, who made history 20 years ago at the Western Open:

In the summer of 1988, Benepe was a 24-year-old mini-tour pro who received a sponsor's exemption into this first PGA Tour event, the Beatrice Western Open at Butler National Golf Club outside Chicago. Incredibly, he edged Peter Jacobsen by a shot. The records of the early years of the PGA Tour are incomplete, but Benepe is the only player in the past 50 years to win in his first PGA Tour event.

Memories of Troon

Watching the Senior British Open at Royal Troon over the weekend, I was reminded of a couple of memories from the 1997 Open there. The first was of Justin Leonard, who played nearly flawlessly in the final round to shoot 65 and win the Claret Jug. The following year Golf Digest, for whom I was working at the time, signed Justin to be a playing editor. I wound up collaborating with him on several instruction articles, including a series called "Smart Golf," which we thought would play to his strengths because he had the reputation of being a canny, strategic player*.

On the Precipice

Now here's a made-for-TV event that I would tune in for—or at least DVR. It seems that Julian Robertson has lured four young guns to New Zealand with a ludicrously large payday at a 36-hole event he calls the Kiwi Challenge. A former hedge-fund giant, Robertson is the man behind the event and the owner of both courses hosting the event, Kauri Cliffs and Cape Kidnappers, a pair of cliffside courses that are among the most spectacular in the world. But while everybody I've talked to who has played them raves about the layouts (Kidnappers by Tom Doak, Kauri by David Harman), the remoteness makes them all but unknown to the average golfer.