The Loop

Missing links: Spieth's earning power and Bubba love in Northwest Florida

April 14, 2014

Stories of interest you might have missed...

"Even with a runner-up finish, companies will be fighting to sign him,' said Bob Dorfman, executive creative director at Baker Street Advertising in San Francisco. "Spieth is exactly what golf needs right now.'" Mike Buteau of BusinessWeek writes how Jordan Spieth is poised to cash in on his popularity and burgeoning fame.

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(Getty Images photo)

"He's local, he's handsome and everybody loves him," a bartender in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., said in this Northwest Florida Daily News story headlined, "My dear Watson! Locals celebrate homegrown Master." A companion piece carries this headline: "'We're ecstatic': Golf community reacts to Watson win."

Does machismo make you a better golfer? That's what the headline in the Telegraph asks. The examples it sites are two different, but successful golfers: Ian Poulter, "never known for his reticence," and Bernhard Langer, "expect a degree of diffidence."

Golf is in serious trouble, Christine Brennan writes in USA Today, but will the powers-that-be take the necessary steps to stop the hemorrhaging of players leaving the sport? "I really don't think these middle-aged white men have it in them to do this," Brennan writes.

The headline on this fivethirtyeight.com story by Roger Pielke Jr. says, "There's Income Inequality in Golf, too." Well, yes. Better players make more money. But the study shows that the gap is narrowing between the haves and have-nots.