What's on your plate at the turn?

Comes the news just yesterday, from your United States Department of Agriculture, that the Food Pyramid is out. The Plate is in.

Bold prediction: This development will not rock the golf world .

The plate symbol, they say, makes it easier to visualize portion sizes relative to the kinds of food you put on it. Vegetables and fruits are still supposed to be good for you, and they should take up the biggest part of your mealtime platter. Same old message, new visuals.

Meat is relegated to being more of a "flavorful condiment" than "this belly-bludgeoning, plate-burying hunk of protein," according to Steven Raichlen, host of PBS' "Primal Grill," quoted Thursday in NPR Online. 

For a golfer, a "condiment" doubles as the vegetable course, by which I mean, pretty much, pickle relish.

It's reasonably rare to hear a golfer making the turn say, "Yeah, I'm gonna go grab a salad and an Evian."'

The "plate," for a golfer on the course, is more likely to be a cardboard tray buckling under the weight of a jumbo weinie and oversized (white flour) bun.

I don't like to wear mustard with my carefully accessorized ensemble. So I opt for a nut mix for my on-course snacking, which, we're learning, is not so bad nutritionalistically speaking: the right fats, good protein-carb balance.

There I was, just last week, feeling virtuous as I headed for No. 10, chewin' on some nuts and sipping water.

I caught a whiff of my buddy's hot dog. And damn, it looked good.

It's radical, but it worked on me

When it was first brought up, I said, sure, I could probably do that, and never dreamed anything would come of it.
Could I learn a couple pieces of sheet music for the piano and record them for my friend’s daughters to sing to? Uh, yeah, if the arrangements are simple enough.
As it turns out, my friend is serious, and she bought me a case of Corona to sweeten the deal. I accepted the beer, and in my experience that makes a contract. So I’m in.
Once upon a time this would have been the work of an afternoon … now it will take me all of the couple weeks I’ve been given. The arrangements are blessedly simple, at least.
They’re snappy little ‘50s-early ‘60s tunes that should work as audition pieces for parts in “Grease," which is how they'll be used. You know them: “Teenager in Love” – Dion and the Belmonts had the best-known version; and “Little Old Lady from Pasadena,” made famous by surfer dudes Jan and Dean.
But I digress … in fact, I opened with the digression (so is it a digression at all?).
What I’m getting around to is an online discussion in the LinkedIn group Golf Industry Professionals about how to bring new people to the game of golf, a sport for which – depending on who’s quoting what – two people leave the game for every one who takes it up OR 1 million people start the game every year and 1 million leave it.
I’m still not crystal clear how building my LinkedIn network is benefiting me, or how LinkedIn justifies its recent IPO, one of the biggest in history. The golf industry group (which let me in) has more than 2,600 members, so maybe that begins to answer how exactly LinkedIn got so valuable.
The discussion took off from the comment, “It’s time we break the mold and look at unconventional ways of bringing new players to our game. Talk is cheap..."
       Cheap, yeah, and it’s gone on for months in this forum. It’s all about a game that, in perception or reality:
·         Is elitist
·         Is too expensive
·         Takes too long to play
·         Is too hard to learn. 
What to do? Learn golf by hitting off a t-ball tee ... make the hole bigger ... offer golf rounds of only six holes ... have PGA interns teach free (or cheap) ... All of them are ideas offered in the discussion.
This month’s Golf Digest has a story about a tournament where the holes were cut 15 inches in diameter. The theme of the piece was expressed in a pull-quote: “At the moment, golf is not really in a position to be haughty about new ideas.”
I have an idea to attract new golfers: Give ‘em free beer. It worked to get me to the piano.
Will they come back if you don’t KEEP giving them beer? Problematic. And what if they’re kids? Give ‘em Arnold Palmers*?
I accepted remuneration in return for producing some music. Does that make me a professional musician? Maybe not precisely. It does give me a new understanding of the dude on the corner with the sign that says, “Will work for beer.”
It might work for golf.

* In legend, Arnie's favorite drink: Half iced tea, half lemonade.

Leave these on the teebox with no regrets

The girl in my life, wise beyond her dozen years, has been known to say, reproachfully, "You should not be smoking, Grumpy." (She calls me Grumpy, which is a story for another day).

I don't argue with her ... I just say, "I only smoke cigars." And: "I only smoke when I play golf."

To which she says, "Cigars are just as bad, maybe worse." And: "Yeah, right, Grumpy."

So: she's onto me. There are some of you for whom this story is not unfamiliar.

I usually escape the girl's disapproval with a couple cigars tucked in my golf bag. I don't always smoke 'em when I play, but there are days when it seems like the right thing to do.

I am in the camp that believes a golf course cigar should never be a distraction: not too big,  not too strong, and above all not expensive. Because you will, some day -- you will -- leave your smoke on the tee box marker while you stripe your drive and forget all about it 'til you're walking onto the green.

With that in mind, the Blogolfosphere offers up these recommendations for golf smokes: mild to medium in body, not too equipment-intensive, and cheap, more or less. You can spend less (the Swisher Sweet/Backwoods Smokes route), but I can't see spending too much more.

Your criteria, and your faves, might be very different. I can handle your reproach, better than I can the girl's.

1. Principes by La Aurora: The presentation -- the silver foil wrapping --suggests a more premium smoke. Peel it away, and you'll find it's pre-cut, so you don't have to fumble for your cutter. It lights easily, draws smoothly, with a good nutty flavor, and it's mild, so you don't have to fight off nicotine intoxication. I like the 5-inch x 38-ring size -- feels comfortable in the hand. You'll know it's a short-filler cigar when it gets a little soft toward the end ... but then, you brought two. Available online from Cigars International (www.cigarsinternational.com) in quantities of 50 or 75 at about 70 cents a stick.

2. Mr. B: These handmade Nicaraguans range in size from 7.25 x 45 down to 6 x 43. They come in candela (green), maduro and natural wrappers, and they won't kick you in the head either. Perfect for handing out to your buddies: they'll never know you spent barely a buck per ... Available online from JR Cigars (www.jrcigars.com).

3. Villiger Export: Machine-made in Switzerland and dry-cured, with Cuban seed tobaccos and a Sumatran wrapper. Villigers come in many sizes, but the box-pressed 4 x 37 Export is handiest for the golf course. Mild in body, and the dry curing lends a distinctive flavor; Villiger represents the top of the line in machine-made cigars. Available from CI in boxes of 50 at about 85 cents a stick.

4. Stogies by Marsh Wheeling: Impress your friends by offering them a gen-u-wine stogie from the brand that pretty much invented the style -- long and thin -- and coined the name, after the preferred smoke of Conestoga wagon drivers. The M.M. Marsh Co. started making stogies in 1840, and operated in Wheeling, W.V., until 2001, when National Cigar bought out the brand and moved the plant to Frankfort, Ind. They're not necessarily simple to find, which might disqualify them as your go-to golf smoke, but the 7 x 34 Deluxe Stogies can be had from Top Hat Tobacco (www.tophatcigar.com) for a little more than a buck apiece.

This is one smoker's opinion ... let me hear yours. I already know the girl's.

There's no golf site like Secret in the Dirt

Of all the tributes to Seve Ballesteros out there this week, the best might be Calder Chism’s memorial caricature at Secret in the Dirt (http://www.secretinthedirt.com).

Chism, a Reno, Nev., editorial cartoonist, caricaturist and artist, has a raft of golf originals on Secret in the Dirt, which is where questing golf souls go to unlock the deep mysteries of the golf swing and the golf life.

When you cruise the cartoon vault on the site, you’ll come across a few Steve Elkington originals alongside the Chisms. Elkington, a 10-time winner on the PGA tour, including the 1995 PGA Championship, dabbles as cartoonist, but what he really wants to explore is the dark art and craft of the game that still grips him at age 48.

Secret in the Dirt was created by Elkington, golf legend Jackie Burke Jr. and Mike Maves (aka Sevam 1, billed as the “Internet golfing sensation”). The subject is golf, and every exploration and side trip might not resonate with every golfer, but your interaction with the site can be as intense or as casual as you want.

Vintage video of Ben Hogan swinging the golf club is reason enough by itself to visit the site.

Elkington, maybe more than most playing pros, is still a student, and at Secret in the Dirt he is as much fellow traveler as teacher.

Steve Elkington and Craig Foster in front of Jimmy Demaret's
locker at Champions Golf Club.

"Learning from the likes of Jackie Burke … I enjoy all facets of the game,” Elkington said last week. “Club repairs … swing theories ... It's all part of knowing your trade.”

Lately, Elkington has trained his attention on a guy who knows a little about club repairs. Craig Foster of Olympia, Wash., is a golf club technician and golf inventor, and his latest design, the DynAlign alignment method, has met and passed the Elk Test.

Foster got an email from Elkington on a Monday in early April asking, Can you be in Houston on Wednesday?

“From the time he picked me up at the airport he had a camera going,” Foster said.

Elkington’s full-time video guy was shooting while Elk cross-examined Foster about DynAlign, and then the pair spent all day April 7 recording at the iconic Champions Golf Club in Houston, where Burke, 1956 Masters champion, still runs things.

The footage will be used in a DynAlign instructional video that will be available for sale on Secret in the Dirt … where it will fit right in alongside the other videos and theoretical discussions on the coolest golf Web site out there.

Journalism as blog, blog as journalism

Along with the slow death of newspapering as we know it, we get confirmation that in the eyes of the world (or the Daily Beast) there is no more useless piece of academic paper than our BAs in journalism.

When I was in j-school, we knew we wouldn’t get rich out there – we knew, at least, that we’d probably make more than teachers. Just about all of us got a job in the field, if we wanted one.

Reporting and writing, if you could get hired, was fun – is still fun – and newsrooms were the best working environment in the known universe, and maybe still are, if you can find one with any people in it. Buttondowns and jocks, cynics and misanthropes, drinkers and gamblers and mumbling insomniacs found common cause there, and the only family they knew, lots of times.

The newsrooms I know best are tombs now, for various reasons, and the industry, if you poked it with a stick, would stir, but faintly.

Now, the Beast suggests, the current crop of journalism grads is learning how to say, “Want fries with that?” Which I’m pretty sure is code for, “At least I can blog.”

As for me, I left daily journalism more than 20 years ago. I went to the dark side, and I married a teacher. I freelance for a newspaper. And I blog. About golf.

I wrote elsewhere, a couple years back, that if I’m gonna have my head in the sand about world politics (poisonous) and global climate (catastrophic), it might as well be in a greenside bunker.

A lot of good journalists lost their jobs, which presumably means they have time to play golf, if they can afford it. And, they can blog. About golf, if they have a mind to.

There are some good golf blogs out there. Try http://weiunderpar, by Stephanie Wei. Or http://golfchops.com. Or Golfdom Daily (http://www.golfdom.blogspot.com/).

I have no idea if any of the proprietors of those sites has a journalism diploma.

And it doesn’t really matter, does it? There’s no more worthless piece of paper.

It might be Tiger, it might be time

I made the casual comment, after Friday at The Masters, “Tiger’s playing well.”

My close friend, who cares little for golf and is as sweet and demure as any wife-like object can be, said, “Is he still bangin’ a buncha chicks?”

Well, dear, I don’t know. They say he has a girlfriend now. They say she’s 22, by which I think they mean her age rather than she’s one of 22.

At which point it was time to move on to how Tiger actually played, and for anybody who thinks a major is enhanced when Tiger Woods is in the hunt, that’s all that matters. The person of close acquaintance in my life had no interest in anything that happened on the course at Augusta National, so I kept to myself that Tiger dropped in a tough putt on 18 Friday for his ninth birdie to get him to 66 for the day, two shots back of McIlroy overall heading into Saturday.

The best thing for big-time golf would be for Tiger to win, to have a duel to the finish like he had with Rocco Mediate at the ’08 U.S. Open. It would give credence to the “Tiger is back” talk and also support the notion that the young guns coming up laugh at the idea of being intimidated by Woods.

If it’s tougher for Tiger to win in these new times, what could be better for golf? That he does win, that you have to pay attention to him (and through the worst of it, who had bigger galleries?) but that others – like McIlroy? --  are good enough and tough enough to match him shot-for-shot.

As for the best of the young studs, well, Martin Kaymer missed the Masters cut. So did fellow major winners from last year Graeme McDowell and Louis Oosthuizen. So did Anthony Kim, D.A. Points, Hunter Mahan, Rory Sabbatini and Jhonattan Vegas, all big talents who’ve shown they can win.

In the end, it might turn out no one’s tougher than Tiger. Still. Let’s see.  

USGA 'taskmaster' earns new job title

It was hard to deny that Chambers Bay Golf Course looked a little brown on TV – and in person – when the U.S. Amateur came to University Place, Wash., last summer. But it was appropriate for “pure links golf,” as the golf course would have it, and was exactly what the United States Golf Association wanted for its No. 1 amateur championship and – we can expect – for the U.S. Open, scheduled for Chambers Bay in 2015.

The name everybody in the Pacific Northwest golf community got to know last summer, and in the years leading up to the Amateur, was Mike Davis, then the USGA’s senior director of rules and competitions. Embodied in that title is all of the qualities we think we know about the USGA: demanding overseer of national championships, strict and prickly, diabolical in setting up the roughs (tall) and putting greens (fast).

Davis

A glance at his photo would give lie to the idea of Davis as the stern face of the USGA. With a golf hat on (as pictured above, at Pebble Beach for the 2010 U.S, Open), he looks a little like a young Tom Watson. With it off, he looks like the guy who maybe played second base on your high-school team and went on to be an accountant or run a furniture store in Minnesota.

Davis now has a little bigger endeavor to run: the whole damn USGA. He was named early this month as the seventh USGA executive director, succeeding David Fay, who retired in December.

The guy charged with upholding the strict standards of the USGA is, in my experience, not a tough guy at all, but a thorough professional, enthusiastic and courteous.

I talked to Davis in 2009, and asked him to address rumors that Chambers was not up to the task of hosting the U.S. Open and could never be ready in time.

Wrong, and wrong.

“I can absolutely, positively, categorically say that we’re going to have the U.S. Open at Chambers Bay,” Davis said.

The work to get ready for the Open, Davis said, is “making sure from an agronomic standpoint that we can get Chambers Bay right so it can play in championship conditions.”

The Amateur at Chambers Bay was a great test case: how would elite golfers  perform on a golf course like nothing they’d ever seen?

The unique qualities of Chambers Bay allowed the USGA and course superintendent David Wienecke to experiment: with the hardness of the greens and approaches, and with the length of holes, some of which were made dramatically shorter then longer then back again day-to-day through the Amateur.

Davis was calling the shots, and now he’s calling all the shots for the organization that governs U.S. golf.