The Loop

Missing Links: Aim of Tiger's newest endorsement 'to take stigma out of supplements,' and is China cracking down on new golf courses?

June 30, 2014

By John Strege

Stories of interest you might have missed…

Tiger Woods' newest endorsement is with MusclePharm, a dietary muscle supplement. "Scores of prominent athletes with failed drug tests have blamed their results on tainted supplements," Karen Crouse writes in the New York Times. Woods' goal, his agent Mark Steinberg said, "is to take the stigma out of supplements. Tiger Woods, maybe the most fit golfer that we've had, let's show that it's O.K. to align yourself with supplements."

/content/dam/images/golfdigest/fullset/2015/07/20/55ad793db01eefe207f6e66c_blogs-the-loop-Tiger%20MusclePharm.jpg

Tiger Woods' golf bag features newest endorsement (Getty Images photo)

Five golf courses have been destroyed or converted to other uses in China, "suggesting the government could finally be cracking down on developers who have long ignored a 2004 ban on building new golf courses," according to this Reuters story by Clare Jim and Xiaoyi Shao.

The Inverness Club in Toledo has hosted four U.S. Opens, the last in 1979 and last hosted the PGA Championship in 1993. A $2 million renovation has just been completed on the Donald Ross design with the intention of bringing major championship golf back to Inverness. David Briggs of the Toledo Blade has the story.

Jim McGovern won the Shell Houston Open in 1993, tied for fifth in the Masters the following year. Now he is the head pro at White Beeches Golf & Country Club in Haworth, New Jersey. "I think they [his four children] hear a lot of stories about their dad, who played 100 years ago," McGovern said. "I don't know if they always believed it." They certainly do now, Andy Vasquez writes in the Record (N.J.), noting how McGovern qualified to play in the PGA Championship by virtue of his performance in the PGA Professional National Championship last week.

"This victory was the answer to a prayer," Babe Zaharias said after winning the U.S. Women's Open at Salem Country Club in 1954."I was in the hospital in Beaumont, Texas [April 1953] for that colostomy, and I made one prayer over and over. I said Please make me able to play again. I'll take care of the winning.'" Two years later, she was dead. Brion O'Connor in the Boston Globe looks back at that victory 60 years ago.