Tour Says Aloha to a New Season
After a break of, what, a couple of weeks, the PGA Tour has returned to the professional sports scene this week, even if it’s not where you expected to find it.
That would be Hawaii, where the Mercedes Championships are being played at the Kapalua Plantation Course on Maui. The annual season-opening event, which has been staged at La Costa since 1969, has swapped herbal wraps for pineapples.
As usual, only the winners of official money events from the previous year are invited to the party, which for the first time will be televised in prime time, at least on the East Coast, on ESPN.
The venue change might take a little getting used to, so to get into the proper spirit, let’s look at this thing from the Hawaiian angle.
* Kapalua means “arms embracing the sea.” There is no mention of the word meaning “sea embracing the golf ball.”
* Kapuna means “elder,” which applies to 49-year-old Tom Watson, who is the most kapuna in the field.
* Malihini means “newcomer,” which is appropriate because Brandel Chamblee, Trevor Dodds, Joe Durant, J.P. Hayes and Chris Perry are all malihinis at the Mercedes.
* Pau means “finished,” pilikia means “trouble,” and puka means “hole,” which could only mean that the player who has the least pilikia getting his golf ball to drop into the puka before he is pau probably is going to win.
We’ll see about that.
DESSERT MENU, PLEASE
Time for the latest fashion news. When a golf clothing designer says his fashions reflect “international flavor, masculinity and sensibility of the modern man,” who comes to mind?
Yes, Jim Furyk. He has signed an endorsement deal to represent the new Johnnie Walker Collection, designed by Jeffrey Banks and available exclusively at Bloomingdale’s.
Now, we know that Johnnie Walker has spent a lot of time making some very nice Scotch whiskey, but this is the company’s first entry into the men’s casual wear field.
Furyk, who was dropped recently by Callaway, has an endorsement deal with Ruth’s Chris Steak House, which now presents an interesting menu choice. Let’s see, with Johnnie Walker on his cap and a Ruth’s Chris patch on his sleeve, what have we got? Scotch and sirloin.
JUST TEE IT SOMEWHERE
It is perhaps the first golf club with a warning label. Actually, it’s an instruction sticker. Orlimar is putting stickers on its clubheads with this advice: “Tee It Low.”
Consider the fact that “Tee it high and let it fly” is one of golf’s most enduring mottoes, yet that strategy simply doesn’t work when players are popping the ball in the air. The way things are going, here’s another new catch phrase: “Everything you know is wrong.”
TIGER UPDATE
Tiger Woods is playing Kapalua this weekend, then taking off during the Sony Open in Honolulu and the Bob Hope in the desert. Woods hasn’t said if he’s going to play at Phoenix the next week, but he almost certainly will because he has scheduled one of his junior clinics the Sunday before the week of the Phoenix tournament, Jan. 28-31.
But chances are that Woods is going to sit out the AT&T; Pebble Beach National Pro-Am for the first time.
It’s a matter of scheduling. The next three weeks are the Buick Invitational at Torrey Pines, the Nissan Open at Riviera (Feb. 18-21) and the $5-million Andersen Consulting Match Play Championship at La Costa, and Woods probably will play all three of those.
That would mean if Woods played Pebble Beach he would face a five-week stretch of tournaments, and that’s about as likely to happen as Carmel moving inland.
THE WORD ON NICK
Question: What’s Nick Faldo’s favorite TV network?
Answer: Nicklowdown.
Let’s see what’s happened to the three-time Masters and three-time British Open champion in recent months: He got a divorce, he dumped his girlfriend, she wrecked his car with a nine-iron, he missed the cut at the Masters and U.S. Open, he dumped his coach, had his worst year since 1986 and continued a winless streak that has stretched to nearly two years.
And now comes the saddest part. The bookies in England have turned their back on him. Faldo has been among the bookmakers’ favorites in majors since they started making odds, but not any more.
According to Ladbroke, Faldo is a huge longshot. He’s 40-1 to win the Masters, the British Open or the PGA and 50-1 at the U.S. Open.
For what it’s worth, Woods is Ladbroke’s clear favorite to win any of the majors: 5-1 for the Masters, 8-1 for the British Open and U.S. Open and 9-1 for the PGA.
YEAH, IT’S TOO FUZZY AND YELLOW
The leader in the clubhouse in the Best Quote Category is David Leadbetter, the coach spurned first by Faldo and then by Se Ri Pak.
Leadbetter clearly didn’t like rumors Pak was considering dumping him, so he quit. And he did so quite colorfully, thank you.
Said Leadbetter: “I refuse to be a tennis ball.
“If she doesn’t want to work with me, fine, but make up your damned mind.”
FILE THIS QUOTE TOO
Sour grapes or not, but Leadbetter says Pak can’t handle her success from her rookie year on the LPGA Tour, when she won four times, including two majors.
Said Leadbetter: “She doesn’t have a life. . . . She used to smile and laugh, but she’s been miserable. . . . She’s headed for a fall.”
MUST BE A MUSIC THING
Maybe something was lost in the translation. . . . Oh, wait, Mark James is English.
Anyway, Europe’s Ryder Cup captain said he was, oh, so nervous in his 1977 Ryder Cup debut as a player with partner Tommy Horton in a foursome against Jack Nicklaus and Tom Watson at Royal Lytham.
Said James: “I couldn’t hit a cow’s ass with a banjo.” Like who would want to?
Acceptable unable-to-hit cliches: Couldn’t hit the Pacific Ocean from the Santa Monica Pier. Couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. Couldn’t hit a baseball with a barn door.
MONEY NEWS
Now, speaking of money (and aren’t we always talking about money), the $700,000 purse increases at the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic and the Nissan Open bring the desert event’s prize money total to $3 million and the Riviera tournament to $2.8 million. And the Buick Invitational at Torrey Pines just increased its prize money to $2.7 million--it was
$1.1 million only five years ago.
The increases reflect the nearly 40% jump in tournament prize money on the PGA Tour, from
$96 million to $134 million. As for largess, there’s plenty of it since the tour schedule features three $5-million events.
Meanwhile, the dollar fallout is being felt just about everywhere on the golf course.
Bob Tway said tour officials have briefed players on what to possibly expect fiscally in 1999: as many as 40 million-dollar players, up from the record of 26 from 1998; a $4-million dollar player; the top 125 on the money list that jumped from $179,273 in 1997 and $228,304 in 1998 to reach $275,000.
“That’s a lot of money,” Tway said. “If you play well, you’re going to make some. If you don’t, you won’t.”
What’s more, the tour’s new $400-million television contract kicks in and every round of every tournament will be televised.
BIRDIES, BOGEYS, PARS
The Eric Davis Celebrity golf classic will be played Monday at MountainGate Country Club in Brentwood. The event benefits the Eric Davis Foundation supporting colon cancer research and pediatric oncology. Details: (818) 995-6545. . . . Arnold Palmer will play in the Bob Hope, Jan. 20-24, with the Palmer Course at PGA West the host course. Palmer is the event’s only five-time winner (1960, 1962, 1968, 1971, 1973). . . . Dow Finsterwald, who won the 1960 L.A. Open at Rancho Park, is the past champion who will be honored at the Nissan Open. Finsterwald, 69, is the 1958 PGA champion. . . . The UCLA men’s golf program will host the second UCLA four-ball stroke play championship March 28-30 at Primm Valley Golf Club in Stateline, Nev. The 36-hole, two-man team, better-ball event is a fund-raiser for the golf program. Details: (310) 206-6588. . . . Jackie Tobian-Steinmann, UCLA’s women’s golf coach who is retiring in June, has been named the winner of the 1999 Rolex/Gladys Palmer Meritorious Service Award, one of collegiate golf’s highest honors.
