February 2012: Hot List 365: Golf Digest

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Results for February 2012 Back to Hot List 365 Index

Brewer takes the helm at Callaway Golf

Monday, February 27, 2012 Comments

When Callaway Golf began its search for a new CEO after the resignation of George Fellows last June, a company spokesman said, "We feel that a passion for the game is a valuable characteristic."

Callaway landed a passionate golfer when it announced Chip Brewer would take over as Callaway CEO effective March 5. Brewer, a low single-digit handicap, comes to Callaway after 14 years at Adams Golf, the last 10 as president and CEO. In related moves, Barney Adams was named interim CEO of Adams Golf and Tony Thornley, who served as interim CEO of Callaway, will remain on the company's board of directors.

Brewer possesses other attributes desirable to Callaway, including the ability to keep costs under control and being the CEO of a publicly traded company--both of which he did while at Adams. Brewer's hiring comes after an extensive, global search that included "a review of over 50 candidates."

Brewer brings other attributes that may help him in his new role. He has early career experience working in Asia, and has helped bring Adams through some difficult years in the first few years of his tenure as president and CEO at Adams. He also has a reputation for investing heavily in the R&D side of the operation at Adams, while smartly investing a marketing budget that is distinctly more limited than the one he now inherits.

Brewer faces some challenges in taking over Callaway. The company's stock closed at $6.51 a share the day of Brewer's appointment (Feb. 27), more than 50 percent off the $13.64 share price when Fellows took over in 2005, and about a third of the $19.25 mark it reached in July 2007--the highest it reached in Fellows' six years at Callaway. Still, Brewer sounded ready for the task.

"I know Callaway and its products very well and I am excited about joining such an iconic company," Brewer said in a press release. "There is a lot of opportunity ahead."

--E. Michael Johnson, with Mike Stachura

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A spring-like correction

Monday, February 27, 2012 Comments

Watched and listened to Golf Channel's annual State of the Game roundtable at the WGC Accenture Match Play, ably refereed by NBC's Dan Hicks and featuring Johnny Miller, Nick Faldo and Brandel Chamblee batting back and forth the game's more pressing issues and arguments of the early part of the year. Aside from the usual carping about Tiger's perceived progress or regress, there was the usual old-men griping discussion over bifurcation and setting up pro-golf-only rules that would ban the anchored putter, reduce the size of drivers and even ban lines on golf balls.

This is all good fun, and as someone who has voiced an opinion or two in his day, I think the discussion is worth having. But before we go too far down this road, let's make sure our facts are straight. At one point, Chamblee suggested even the slightest adjustment in driver performance might pay meaningful dividends.

"The spring effect, they could lower that in the professional ranks. Every hundredth of a point they lower it, is worth five yards when you swing it 100 miles an hour."

First of all, how a driver performs is a lot more complicated than isolating a simple COR limitation, but before we do or suggest anything, perhaps we should focus on the science. So in the interest of setting the record straight, if the COR limitation was lowered by a hundredth of a point, from .83 to .82, it might result in something like two yards, not five.

In other words, not a big deal. Not to put words in the mouths of the panel, but in large part, I think what they wish is that fear be restored to the professional game in greater quantity than it currently exists. You might get there with a rule that outlawed anchoring, and you might get there with a rule that cut driver size in half. But you won't get there by lowering COR by a hundredth of a point.

And we can talk about bifurcation until the cows come home. I don't particularly want to, but I'll suggest this: Bifurcation already exists with the groove rule and it already exists with the way so few golfers play by the rules. I still think if the pros are asked to play by a fundamentally different set of rules, even in some small way like anchored putters or lowered COR, the possibility exists that average golfers over time will likely drift closer to the game the pros play than some other game no matter how easy it supposedly might be, hundredths of a point notwithstanding.

--Mike Stachura

Follow me on Twitter @MikeStachura

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New groove ideas not so easy

Thursday, February 23, 2012 Comments

Golf patents are a dangerous thing. And I'm not just talking about the lawsuits that ball companies might throw at one another over arcane language about the relative hardness of one cover versus another. I'm talking about patents that suggest something might be possible when it's clearly not.

Take for instance a new groove pattern patent issued to Bridgestone recently and detailed by the golf patent wizard Dave Dawsey at golf-patents.com. While the groove rule has produced a flurry of activity in ways to make the face somehow regain some of the potential lost spin brought about by the more restrictive groove guidelines that went into effect in 2010, that activity sometimes goes beyond what the rules allow.

Bridgestone's new pattern patent proposes to increase backspin by essentially extending the angle and the edges of the groove above the flat surfaces between grooves. Nifty? Yes. Unique? Probably? Conforming? Uhhh, no.

While it seems clear that the Bridgestone patent does well to cover the measurement specifications of the new rule regarding the width and volume of the grooves, the angle of the edges and the spacing between the grooves, it overlooks one key stipulaton. In the Rules of Golf, under section 5 (i) in Appendix II (Design of Clubs), there exists the phrase: "Grooves must not have sharp edges or raised lips." Even to an untrained eye like mine, these would appear to be raised lips.

This example is not meant to demean the effort of Bridgestone to make an effort to improve face performance. Their efforts are no less creative or thoroughly pursued than any other major manufacturer. It's inspiring, in a way, because it clearly shows how equipment companies aren't simply going through the motions to achieve some predetermined marketing objective. It does show, though, that the idea of a vast and easily accessible technology cornucopia of performance-enhancing workarounds to the groove restrictions aren't so easily achieved.

But it makes me wonder another thing, something that says a lot more about patents and the golf business than it says about USGA rules. If even I can tell this groove pattern is nonconforming, why would Bridgestone seek a patent? Is it a desire to pursue the manufacture and sale of non-conforming clubs? Is it a way of holding space in case there's a change in heart among golf's ruling bodies to loosen the rules for equipment for average golfers? Or is it something even more complex, the idea of patenting one fragment of an idea as depicted generally in this groove pattern that could be the foundation for some future product's features?

Bridgestone declined comment at this time on the patent.

As we've seen from the patent office before, a lot of ideas are possible (more patents are issued for golf than any other sport). Not a lot of them end up as fully formed products, though. Especially ones that are non-conforming. At least that's always been the case before.

--MIke Stachura

Follow me on Twitter @MikeStachura

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Tiger Woods' belly ban idea a little half-baked

Wednesday, February 8, 2012 Comments

GOUGE: It must be nice to be Tiger Woods. Voice an opinion and all of a sudden it becomes an international crusade. Gee, I've only been killing the belly and long putter for half a decade. Maybe if I started wearing a red shirt and hitting 280-yard stingers with my 3-wood people would start listening to me.

As to the specifics of his suggestion, namely that the putter be restricted to a length no longer than the shortest club in the bag (generally the highest lofted wedge), it's a delightfully practical albeit half-baked attempt at proposing a rule that technically doesn't ban anchoring the putter but in large effect does. (I suppose one could choose to putt with a low-lofted hybrid jammed in your belly button, but at that point one could argue your game on the greens might be better served by some advanced pharmaceuticals.)

While practical and diplomatic, Tiger's idea is hardly original to him. Peter Dawson, the head of the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews who once suggested that a solution for distance was to ban the tee, juts his chin out just a little farther in characteristic disgust when the subject of belly putters is brought up. Insiders know the R&A has not been particularly thrilled with the long and belly putter for a long time before Webb Simpson and Keegan Bradley were getting paid to play golf. While others have proposed a limit on the length of the putter tied to the length of the driver minus a certain number (say nine inches), there's little doubt that whatever geometric theorem you invoke, the Tiger belly ban is just a politically demure way of getting around what's really distasteful, namely anchoring the putter to something other than your hands.

Arnold Palmer said in an interview on the Golf Channel in October the long and belly putter should be banned. Also on the Golf Channel, Brandel Chamblee has made the case intelligently that the belly putter could be Exhibit A in the case for bifurcation, that average golfers should be allowed to use almost anything on the putting green, but elite players should be restricted to conventional-length putters.

It would be so much easier for golf's ruling bodies if they just took the same approach to belly putting that they took to croquet-style putting back in 1967. Back then, USGA Executive Director Joe Dey and others in charge recognized that something wasn't right and just said, "Be gone." His words then: "We felt it was the only way to eliminate the unconventional styles that have developed in putting. The game of golf was becoming bizarre. It was some other game, part croquet, part shuffleboard and part the posture of Mohammedan prayer." I like that. Bizarre is what we have when players use a long putter to extricate themselves from cacti, dry creek beds or jungle, as was the case last Sunday with Spencer Levin.

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