We lost Stu Schneider this week, which is inexplicable. Stu was only 52 and we thought he’d be here forever. I guess you think of everyone like that, but especially someone like Stu, someone you assumed would always be there to meet a need, to fill a gap, to come through. For years, Stu ran our PR department, but we always treated him like an editor. Then he became one, running a college sports web site back in those start-up days, and then Golfweb. Lately, he wrote a very entertaining television column for Golf World. He was all over that beat. Stu was talented, clever, and very funny. Mostly, of all the people I know who came from that old print world, Stu got and loved the Internet. He understood its pace, it’s power and he used it with as much savvy as any reporter I know. It extended a hundredfold his natural talent for networking. So Stu was filling in and we thought we had time to give him more to do, that eventually he’d be a big part of our web site. He came to me a couple of months ago and talked about what Golf Digest and Golf World could create on the web. He could see it. He could make you see it. We talked about our sons, both Matthews, just a couple of years apart. We thought we had plenty of time.

Geoff Shackelford writes movingly about Stu today and and Phil Mushnick makes note of his passing in his column as well.

We will all miss him.

—Bob Carney

We love it when a tour player comes up to us and says, "Hey, you're working with so-and-so. I saw him on the range doing this," and he mimics a backswing with the spine tilting way left. We love it because that's exactly what a backswing should look like.
-- Andy Plummer and Mike Bennett

Another Stack & Tilt believer checks in:

I read about the new stack and tilt swing in my latest issue. I tried it 2  or 3 times at the driving range - hitting 30 or 40 balls each time.  I played 2 rounds of golf using it. Today, I just came back from my second round.   I am stunned at how much better and more consistent I am hitting my irons.  The only issue I still have is this: It has not improved my tee off with  my driver at all. I have never been able to hit a driver well and still  cannot.

For my irons, I am now hitting almost every shot flush. I am amazed and  very excited. If I could only hit my driver the same way, I would drop my score by over 20 shots - from around 100 to 80. I am not kidding.  If you can help me hit flush shots consistently with my driver, what an  endorsement a 20 shot drop in my game would be. My friends are stunned at  my iron shot sudden improvement, by the way. I had been able to hit many decent iron shots during a round, but nothing close to what I achieved  today using the stack and tilt swing. -- Brian Gilbert, Quebec.

Brian, you missed the advice from Andy Plummer on the driver: "Players who feel too steep coming down with the driver should try one of three things: First, make sure the ball position is far enough forward.The ball should be opposite the front heel with the driver. Second, keep the hand path more to the inside, both on the backswing and more importantly on the downswing. When the hands move out and away from the body on the downswing, the swing gets too steep and over the top. This is a common fault with the driver. Third, the player might need to stand up faster on the downswing. That upward thrust of the lower body helps to shallow out the swing."

Good luck with that driver...

—Bob Carney

"Well, I'll have to play real quick, won't I?"
--Tiger Woods

Golf Digest Playing Editor Tiger Woods visited Congressional Country Club, site of his AT&T National event the first week of July, and had a rave review of the course. Leonard Shapiro covered for the Washington Post, with video of Tiger's press conference. Tiger, who may not be able to play the tournament  depending on the birth of his and wife Elin's first child, answered the ultimate "what if" question: What will you do, Tiger was asked, if you're leading the tournament on Sunday, about to tee off on the 18th hole, when you learn that Elin is in labor?

"Well, I'll have to play real quick, won't I?" he said with a laugh. "Real quick."

—Bob Carney

(Jonathan Newton - Washington Post)

The golf swing is like a suitcase into which we are trying to pack one too many things. John Updike, quoted in the Gigantic Book of Golf Quotations

Blake Myers of Greenville, South Carolina brings up the question of Stack & Tilt on the driver swing.

I liked the article on a new to swing based on a new way to think.  However, you didn’t address the driver.  Are stack and tilters supposed to hit down on the long ball too?

This came up before, Blake, and Andy Plummer sent this advice to keep the driver swing more level:

"Players who feel too steep coming down with the driver should try one of three things: First, make sure the ball position is far enough forward. The ball should be opposite the front heel with the driver. Second, keep the hand path more to the inside, both on the backswing and more importantly on the downswing. When the hands move out and away from the body on the downswing, the swing gets too steep and over the top. This is a common fault with the driver. Third, the player might need to stand up faster on the downswing. That upward thrust of the lower body helps to shallow out the swing."

Keep stacking, keep tilting!

(photo of Aaron Baddeley by J. D. Cuban)

"The people who took care of those yards had to live somewhere." John Mineck, on his birthplace, Byram

Golf Digest uses the thousands of round-by-round evaluations of 815 golfers, mostly single-digit players, to create it's 100 Greatest Course list. One of those raters was John D. Mineck, a self-made businessman who used the proceeds from the sale of his software business to co-found Boston Golf Club. Mineck died Thursday while working on that course at the age of 54. Ron Sirak of Golf World writes a tribute to Mineck, who joined the Golf Digest panel, he said in his application, to explore the "personalities" of golf courses because "I believe courses have personalities just like people do." Sirak recalls his round with Mineck at Boston Golf Club:

As we played the remarkable Gil Hanse design carved out of the gently rolling terrain a mere 20 minutes from downtownn Boston, Mineck spoke with the unrestrained joy of a man completely in love with golf. But here was one key to understanding Mineck. When I asked where he grew up, John told me, "In Connecticut. Byram." He didn't say Greenwich.

Byram is the other side of the tracks in Greenwich, the New York City suburb with more hedge-fund operators per square foot than any place on earth. It was especially the other side of the tracks when Mineck was young, a place of which he said, "The pople who take care of those yards had to live somewhere."

John, an accomplished woodworker, was President of the Society of Arts and Crafts. He also supported the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston, among other causes.

From Robyn Patterson of Boston Golf Club comes these details on services:

For both funeral services and memorial, golf attire is welcomed:

Visitation
Wednesday, May 30, 2:00pm to 8:00pm
Pyne Keohane Funeral Home
21 Emerald Street (off Central)
Hingham
For directions and parking: www.keohane.com or 1-800-keohane

Memorial
Thursday, May 31, 2:00pm
Boston Golf Club (14th Fairway – comfortable shoes strongly advised, no heels please)
Please park at Pilgrim Skating Arena and shuttle buses will be provided to the golf course.

Golf lost one its best people in John Mineck. We will miss him.

—Bob Carney

Think ahead. Golf is a next-shot game. Billy Casper.

This NY Daily News story about flexible, paper-thin Sony video screen technology caught my eye. This new plastic (not glass) screen, which has been prophesied for years but only produced in stiff, bulky "tablets" until now, prompts all kinds of golf dreams. A wrist band with video tips or swing sequences for the range. The ability to follow a tournament while playing in one yourself. A golf instructional magazine that's paperless and portable. We have an ongoing debate around the office about whether magazines like ours will ever be replaced by the web. Those arguing against cite a magazine's convenience and portability. This Sony technology removes those barriers. Consider a flexible tablet that gives you your email, weather.com, your local paper, YouTube and, of course, the current issue of Golf Digest just like that.

See you on the range.

—Bob Carney

Fundamentally, the marksman aims at himself.
-- Zen in the Art of Archery

Eyebrows are raised and eyes are rolling over John Strege's story in Golf World this week about Jacqueline Gagne, the lady who has made fourteen (her latest count) holes-in-one this year! Can't be, right?  It'll be a Rorschach test in grillrooms across the country this week. The hard-nosed will say: "Not a chance. No way. Can't be." The lottery-lovers will say, "Hey, you never know...."

Her playing companions (not always the same people, by the way) seem to believe her. The reporters for local paper the Desert Sun certainly seem to: Here's assistant sports editor, Shad Powers',  statement:

Editor's note: Believe me, to say that we didn't believe Jacqueline Gagne's hole in one claims is an understatement. I believe the phrase "That crazy woman just e-mailed again with another hole in one" was uttered more than a couple times around the office.But after golf writer Larry Bohannan talked to her and started to believe, so did we.Every one of her aces was witnessed and her character appears unassailable. We tried to poke holes in her story, and we couldn't. So in short, we believe in miracles.

What's more, a camera crew for ABC affiliate KESQ captured her sinking a 148-yard shot, one of several at the eighth hole on the Dinah Shore Tournament Course at Mission Hills Country Club in Palm Springs. Gagne appeared yesterday on CBS's Early Show with Harry Smith.

I'm having fun reading the numbers blogs on the chances of such a thing happening. After citing a mathematician quoted by the Desert Sun, who placed the odds for 10 holes-in-one in 75 rounds at 113,500,000,000,000,000 to one, the Wall Street Journal's "Numbers Guy", Carl Bialik put the odds at 12 septillion to one. Then he quoted another math expert who turned the whole problem around:

Meanwhile, Berkeley mathematician George M. Bergman warned of a "subtle fallacy": We focus on the unlikely events that do happen, but there are many other events that would be equally impressive but don’t happen. We don't hear about the millions of golfers who play 75 rounds without a hole in one. (I made a similar point about improbable sports events in a column last fall.) And since Ms. Gagne did accomplish her feat -- corroborated by witnesses -- the only justifiable probability is 100%, "since the event happened," Stanford's Keith Devlin told me.

Or did it....

—Bob Carney

I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do. Willa Cather

You thought the lumberjacks were finished at Oakmont? Not quite. In the June issue Ron Whitten chronicles the massive (5,000-plus trees) clearing at Oakmont, much of the work down in the dark of night. The latest specimen, an old sycamore, fell Monday, between the clubhouse and the 18th green. This was a day job by Davy Tree Expert Company. It will make room for more grandstands and presumably give the green a bit more breathing room.

Gerry Dulac has the story on the Post-Gazette site today:

The fallen tree was the lone sycamore that stood in a cluster of six trees -- known as the Oak Grove -- behind the 18th green and 10th tee. Oakmont president Bill Griffin said the tree was removed to allow for more grandstand space behind the final hole. "It was going to be very difficult to build [a grandstand] around that tree to get the seating arrangements around the 18th green," Griffin said. "With that tree in place, we were limited to 2,100 spectators [in the grandstand]."

Rumors that these added seats would be for Oakmont members only are false, says a club source.

The deceased sycamore:

—Bob Carney

(Photo: Stephen Szurlej)

When Tiger was six months old, he would sit in our garage, watching me hit balls into a net. He had been assimilating his golf swing. When he got out of the high chair, he had a golf swing. Earl Woods

Nice piece by Leonard Shapiro in the Washington Post on Tim O'Neal the African-American golfer struggling to graduate from the Nationwide Tour to the big show. There's an intriguing O'Neal quote on the First Tee:

"The First Tee program was designed originally for inner-city kids," said O'Neal, who tees off in the first round Thursday at 8:10 a.m. "But I've done a bunch of clinics, and you only see a handful of African American kids. There aren't any minority golfers in the major colleges, so what does that tell you? When will we see more minorities out here? I honestly don't see it happening for another 20 years."

As First Tee Executive Director Joe Barrow reminded us at Augusta this year, that's exactly what Earl Woods used to say when pressed on when The First Tee would diversify the tours. Hey, it took my 25 years to make this Tiger, Earl would say in so many words, so you can expect it will take at least that long. Pretty sage way to look at it. Patience, what?

You'll find similar comments by Johnny Miller about O'Neal and the First Tee's impact in Golf Digest.

—Bob Carney

(Kevin Clark: Washington Post)

Whatever deceives seems to produce a magical enchantment. Plato

Indianan Greg Dillon takes serious exception to our recommendation in the final Awkard Moments in the June issue, in which we advise, upon seeing a prominent club member in a compromising position with a woman who is not his wife, to "Do absolutely nothing about what you just saw. It never happened."

I enjoyed the article in the June issue about awkward moments on the golf course. I enjoyed it, that is, until I read your response to the final awkward moment. I was pleased that you'd taken such a strong
moral stance on both the racist joke and on the person who cheated on the golf course...

But our advice on the marital cheater, Greg says,

suggests that morals and principles are useful only when the response is clear-cut or easy. The fact is that it did happen and someone did witness it. A better response would be to suggest the witness talk with his wife about an appropriate way to address the situation. My experience has lead me to believe that you're correct that this can ruin friendships, reputations, and marriages. The damage has been done, however, by the man who chose to betray his wife, not by the man who acts on the stance that cheating is wrong whether it's on the golf course or in a marriage.

Hmmm. Greg, while I agree with your stance on cheating, I'm not sure I want to breathe a word of this to another human being, especially to one who might repeat it. I tend to believe, as did the authors of this piece, that marital relationships are so complicated that one can be responsible for the morality of only one's one. A cop-out, I know, but a cop-out with a certain amount of wisdom attached, I believe.

What do the rest of you think?

—Bob Carney