Fred Larsen's Latest...
GOLFING 2007
With the exception of the pros, football season will soon be a thing of the past. The ardent football fans will be going into stages of withdrawal.
The University of Alabama could have saved so much time and money if they had just tuned in the local sports Talk Shows. The calls were loaded with potential coaches, who would work for a lot less.
TV coverage of golf has made a great stride in having it all handled by the Golf Channel. They have a great team of professionals handling the coverage. No longer will there be the overtime period of another sport cut into the golf coverage. If possible, it probably would be a good idea if
some of the other sports could follow this same procedure.
The season starts with the Mercedes Championship in Hawaii with only winners of the 2006
season participating. Unfortunately for the viewers, and the sponsors, Tiger is not participating. For his own personal reasons he will, skip about 4 important tournaments. For the last 4 or 5 decades golf has been fortunate to have 3 or 4 players prominent at the same time. Jones, Hagen, and Sarazen, Nelson, Snead, and Hogan, and Palmer, Player, Nicklaus , and Trevino. Today we we really have one: Tiger.
Michelson looked as if he was going to be the competition, but it has appeared d to have faded at this time.
There are some outstanding young players, but unfortunately most of them are from other
countries. This is also true on the LPGA tour. We have the most, and the best, facilities in the world for developing great golfers. Maybe we are getting spoiled or too technical in our teaching. There just may be something to that quote, “If sex was taught the same way golf is being taught, civilization would end.” Sam Snead, one of our greatest golfers , once remarked that he could not understand how he could play so well, because he did not know how technical the game was.
In the 1950’s Ben Hogan was offered five hundred dollars appearance money at a couple of tournaments. Some of the pros were upset about this, but the name Hogan increased the gate receipts, and they profited by this. The same applied to Arnold Palmer during the growth of TV coverage. Tiger is the same, only on a much larger scale.
Sponsors have put up great amounts of money to run these tournaments, and they do so with the anticipation of all of the top players trying to win the million dollar first prize, only to find the two top players decided not to play. I would imagine that next year the sponsors of these major tournaments will have a stipulation in their contract that will require a guarantee their presence.
The Golf Channel has its guns set for 2007.. now all they need is some new ammunition.