You Can’t Buy This Kind of Publicity

They’ve gone “logo” at Callaway Golf, one of Annika Sorenstam’s main endorsement sponsors, which has found an unusual way to figure out how much all the television and print exposure that Sorenstam received last week at Colonial was really worth.

Much to Callaway’s pleasure, an Ann Arbor, Mich., company called Joyce Julius & Associates, which tracks media impact on businesses and puts a dollar value on impressions, decided on its own to study the phenomenon of Sorenstamania last week. The results are nothing short of staggering.

Joyce Julius tracked only Sorenstam’s first round and discovered that Callaway’s logo had 11 minutes and 53 seconds of clear, in-focus exposure time. It’s called National Television Impression Value Analysis (NTIV). Figuring an advertising rate of $12,000 for 30 seconds, that time was worth $289,955 for Callaway. That 11:53 is the longest logo-time ever, breaking the previous mark of 9:53 held by Nike at the 1997 Masters when Tiger Woods won for the first time.

But that’s not all.

Greg Pahl of Joyce Julius estimated that Sorenstam generated $8 million to $10 million in exposure in the print media for Callaway and another $4 million to $6 million for Callaway through television news coverage.

“She did very well,” Pahl said.

One more thing: Had Sorenstam played all four rounds, Pahl figured the increase in the TV ad rates for Saturday and Sunday and estimated that Callaway would have received exposure time worth $1.8 million.

Add it all up and Sorenstam is a bargain for Callaway, which pays her an estimated $1-million endorsement fee and has her under contract through 2004.

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The $133,200 cost of the full-page, four-color advertisement that ran last week in USA Today, congratulating Sorenstam, was shared by four of her endorsement sponsors -- Callaway, Cutter & Buck, Kraft and Mercedes-Benz. The advertisement was designed by Jeff Adamoff, Callaway’s creative director, who used to design album covers for the Eagles and George Strait.

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Even though it has been only eight months since the last Ryder Cup, the PGA of America is ready to make those cash registers start singing right now, for the Sept. 17-19, 2004 event at Oakland Hills Country Club in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.

The PGA of America is offering a season’s pass ($275) or a special pavilion pass ($425) as well as daily tickets ($100 on Sunday).

The gallery will be limited to 38,000 a day. Here’s another way to think about it: If every one of them buys a season’s pass, that’s $10,450,000.

Of course, there are still 14 1/2 months to decide the team, but the top 10 right now are Woods, Phil Mickelson, Jim Furyk, Davis Love III, David Toms, Justin Leonard, Jerry Kelly, Rich Beem, Len Mattiace and Kenny Perry.

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The quote of the week is from Perry, who won the Colonial: “I’ll probably be remembered as the guy who won an Annika event, but that’s OK, that doesn’t bother me. At least I’ll be remembered for something

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Here’s what Leonard knows about Olympia Fields, site of the U.S. Open: “It’s outside of Chicago.”

Somebody get that guy a driver for his courtesy car.

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Is this consistent or what? Furyk has played 13 tournaments and has 10 top 10s, a stretch that includes eight of his last nine events. The defending champion this week at the Memorial, Furyk is a total of 112 under par this year.

The 69.94 scoring average last week at Colonial was the second lowest in the 57-year history of the tournament, beaten only by the 69.67 set in 1997 -- when Woods shot 12 under in his only appearance and still finished fourth.

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Gil Morgan, reminiscing about the British Open, said a female streaker came running out of the gallery and tried to hug Jose Maria Olazabal, his playing partner. Morgan had a quick reaction: “Any chance I can get paired with you again?”