A lot has been said and written about the luxury life on the US PGA Tour but none of it strikes a truer note than the words of Gary Christian as he walks down Pebble Beach’s famous 18th hole: “It sure beats selling knives.”
It sure does. Behind Christian, the Pacific Ocean crashes into the rocks of the Monterey coast. Ahead of him stretches a world of possibility. “It sounds a little bit daft, but I truly feel that I am being preserved for something really good,” he says. “I get right to the point where it seems that I might be at the end of the rope and then something good happens.”
Given the peripatetic career of the 40-year-old Englishman, it is hard to deny him his spiritual optimism.
LET’S find a better way to rank our golf courses — that’s the message from course architect and former Irish Close champion Declan Branigan.
Branigan, a former international who won the Irish title twice, the West of Ireland championship on two occasions and two East of Irelands, is not a fan of golf courses being rated in numerical order.
As a course designer and golfer, the Louth man appreciates the quality of all kinds of golfing facilities, and feels that the system of ‘top 100 rankings’ favoured by golf magazines is unfair.
What is particularly interesting, is that Branigan has been a member of those ranking list panels, so he has inside knowledge on the strengths and limitations of the exercise.
His biggest problem with the system is the potential financial cost to golf clubs, particularly those rated well down the list.
One conversation he had with a group of Scandinavian visitors to Seapoint illustrates the point.
Decision
“I asked them straight out how did they make their choice of courses to play in Ireland and they said: ‘We google the top courses, then we select the region we want to visit, then we look at the courses we will play in that region and then we make our decision purely on the rankings’.
“And I said to them, ‘would you not try some other courses that locals might recommend?’, and they just said, ‘look man, we are over here for eight days.
If you’ve ever wanted devote a one-year sabbatical to nothing but playing golf in Ireland, you can. Ireland has well over 400 courses in seven regions, packed into a country the size of Maine. You could play a on different golf course every day for a year and still have a number of undiscovered gems waiting. If a typical three-day or seven-day golf holiday makes a better fit for your schedule, you can play courses designed more than 100 years ago, such as the Old Course at Lahinch Golf Club in County Clare, in Shannon, on Ireland’s southwest coast. Read more…
And yet this is precisely the vision that greets us here in Abu Dhabi: a revitalised Woods, fiercely focused on reclaiming his supremacy and proving that last month’s victory in Los Angeles – his first anywhere for 749 days – was no aberration.
As if that prospect were not tantalising enough, Woods starts his first tournament of 2012 in a threeball alongside the men most likely to upstage him, Luke Donald and Rory McIlroy. It is difficult to recall a trio blessed with quite so much stardust. When they tee off together at the Abu Dhabi Golf Club at 7.40am on Thursday, and again at 12.05pm on Friday, they should galvanise the galleries in the Gulf like never before.
Steve Thomas, a former Champions Tour player, was arrested in an undercover Internet child sex sting in Florida, Golfchannel.com reported Tuesday.
Thomas was one of 40 people arrested in Kissimmee, Fla.
Detectives posed as juveniles, parents or guardians in online chat rooms and instant messaging programs, luring suspects to a location in Osceola County with the purpose of having sex with a minor.
Thomas was listed by the Sheriff’s Office as Stephen Wesley Thomas, 55, of Meridian, Miss. His occupation was listed as “professional golfer.”
Thomas played in 44 events on the PGA Tour, making 13 cuts. He played in 34 Champions Tour events with two career top-10s. He last played a full schedule in 2009.
Tiger Woods will make his 2012 US PGA Tour debut at the Pebble Beach National Pro-Am next month.
For Woods, who is kickstarting his 2012 campaign at the Abu Dhabi Championship on 26-29 January, it will be his first appearance in the tournament, which runs from 9-12 February, since 2002.
“It will be fun going back,” Woods said on his website. “It’s always been one of my favourite spots.”
The winner of 71 US PGA Tour titles and 14 major championships last played at Pebble Beach in the 2010 US Open, when he tied for fourth.
Woods ended the 2011 season by winning the Chevron World Challenge, an unofficial 18-man event he hosted, to end a two-year winless drought while he struggled for fitness and form, with his private life in tatters.