Ralph Nader endorses "We Need a Department of Peace"

“…very important little paperback…a pragmatic argument for a department of peace…”

Photo courtesy of The Lakeville Journal.

Nader's radio interview with Charlie Keil.

Meanwhile, in the Twitterersphere:

@hipbonegamer @bbenzon @zenpundit I like what George Will said about this years ago: we have several institutes of peace: USMA, USNA& USAFA

— Timothy Furnish, PhD (@Occidentaljihad) July 26, 2016

@bbenzon @hipbonegamer @zenpundit Either way, what they do is far more useful than the abstract, chimerical "study of peace."

— Timothy Furnish, PhD (@Occidentaljihad) July 26, 2016

@bbenzon @hipbonegamer @zenpundit Right. Because the US has done so poorly in conflict the last 230 years.

— Timothy Furnish, PhD (@Occidentaljihad) July 26, 2016

@bbenzon @hipbonegamer @zenpundit No one said anything about "bombing the world." Stop putting words into my mouth, er, Tweets.

— Timothy Furnish, PhD (@Occidentaljihad) July 26, 2016

@Occidentaljihad @hipbonegamer @zenpundit What else have we got? Our ground game is not working. It's blowing us back to the Middle Ages.

— Bill Benzon (@bbenzon) July 26, 2016

Purchase at Amazon.com (paperback, Kindle), or Barnes and Noble (paperback, NOOK Book).

Pet Peeves About Golf Channel's Day 1 International Crown Coverage

In no particular order:

There's No "Q" in Sakura!  And No "Mini"!!  Sa-koo-ra Yo-ko-mee-nay.  Say it fast with equal emphasis on each syllable and you'll be fine.  Never mind that the romanized "r" in Japanese is somewhere between an English "r" and "l"--too tough to learn for just one week.  Although if you can learn how to lisp "Atha" and "Motho," why not go the extra mile for one of the JLPGA's best players ever?  [Update (7/26/14, 9:33 am):  Also, Sakura's no "meanie" (although Kirk and Wright might beg to differ after that shot on 17 Friday!).  Yo-ko-mee-nay, people!]

Speaking of Sakura...  She's got a John Daly-esque swing.  And I think we saw it once on the 18th hole.  C'mon, people!

First-Tee Footage?!  Everyone talked about how emotional (in so many ways) the 1st drive of the 1st tee was this week.  Yet did Golf Channel shoot it, save it, and replay it for us?  Noooo!!!!!  I know playing every national anthem would have taken too long.  But how about a quick montage with the last 2 seconds of each country's anthem and reaction shots by the players during it and right after they knew where their 1st shots went?  Or feature the best reactions at the top of Day 2's coverage?

Show More Tee Shots!  When something even remotely dramatic happens on the tee--shot in the woods, player hits fairway after partner puts it in woods, one bomber outdrives another, whatever--we oughtta see it.  Everything matters in match play and with so few groups on the course, we should be able to get a good sense of how every match is unfolding and not have to rely so much on Juli Inkster's summaries of what happened.

Know Your Matches.  I can't believe that Anna Nordqvist and Caroline Hedwall--the Vikings of the Solheim Cup--struggled so much in the 1st 12 holes yesterday against struggling young Okinawans Mika Miyazato and Mamiko Higa.  So much for Solheim Cup experience and heroics, eh?  You know what else I can't believe?  That we barely saw a shot of the latter's great play and not even much of the former's great comeback.  This was a made-for-tv David vs. Goliath deal, but we saw very little of it.  (True, most of the fireworks from Team Japan occurred in the 1st 5 holes.  But this is what they make highlights for.)

Speaking of Balance...  Man, the cameras loved Teams USA and Spain, and I wholeheartedly endorse that decision.  But if 2 seconds per shot of golfers walking, standing, and consulting with each other and their caddies on non-pivotal shots were cut, just think of how much more could have been shown of the Vikings vs. the Okinawans, Karrie Webb and Minjee Lee taking it to Na Yeon Choi and In-Kyung Kim (with attendant speculation on how the pressure is affecting the half of Team ROK that isn't coming into this week with a whole lot of confidence), and Inbee Park and So Yeon Ryu lighting up the course?

And Now a Word from Our Sponsors.  Given how many commercials that GC gets to show at the end of each day, wouldn't it be nice if they cut back a little midway through the coverage?

[Update 1 (8:00 am):  Ruthless Mike wants more credit given where it's due to Team Taiwan.  HappyFan gives Judy Rankin credit for mentioning the Japan-Korea almost-annual team matches during an interview, but rightly criticizes the bulk of the coverage for pretending as if the Asian and other non-Solheim Cuppers have no professional team experience.  I wish I had thought of both (or, more accurately, remembered the latter).  I mean, nobody remembers the Lexus Cup?]

Recommended Reading: Ruthless Mike on Tiger's Drop, the Masters' Rules Committee Call, and Our Overreactions

This is the best analysis I've seen of what happened at 15, in the scorer's tent, in the committee meeting, and on teh interwebs Friday and Saturday.  Way to go, Ruthless Mike!

Tiger's 4 shots back with 18 holes to go.  He could still win this thing!  I'll admit my opinion of Tiger the person has taken a huge hit, and it's affected my admiration of Tiger the golfer, but I would still love to see him take his next major title today!

Tim Maitland: Wie Throws Her Weight behind Education for All in Asia

Wie Throws Her Weight behind Education for All in Asia

Hong Kong 17^th October 2011

Tim Maitland

American superstar Michelle Wie added her voice to a campaign by the United Nations’ children’s charity UNICEF for universal primary education in Asia, during a brief stop in Hong Kong.

Wie was speaking at the annual HSBC Champions Charity Golf Day at Hong Kong’s Clear Water Bay Golf & Country Club, which raises awareness and funds for UNICEF’s campaign.

“I believe everyone should have the opportunity to get, at least, a primary education,” declared the 22-year-old.

“I’ve learned so much about myself going to college, not just from studies but about myself in general: moving away from my parents, having to do everything for myself, having to manage everything, I met some amazing people and I think everyone deserves that opportunity. Hopefully I’ll graduate in March. Getting my education, obviously, I believe very strongly in that… and I think it aligns very strongly with this day,” added Wie, who was en route from last week’s LPGA event in Malaysia to Stanford University in California where she is finishing her fifth and final year of a degree in communications.

The Honolulu-born Wie, who as a 12-year-old became the youngest qualifier for an LPGA tournament, was making only her second trip to Hong Kong. Her first, a family holiday 12 years ago, was ruined by a typhoon.

She cited “YE” Yang Yong-Eun’s achievement in becoming Asia’s first male Major champion and the current domination of Taiwan’s current world number one Yani Tseng in the women’s game as proof of what Asians can achieve when they’re given the chance.

“She’s an amazing golfer. I’ve competed against her since I was 14 and the way she has improved is very inspiring. She’s a very strong force out there whenever she is in contention, which I think is very impressive and it makes me want to become a better player because I’m kind of in her situation. There are so many players on tour from different places; you have the American players but you have Yani, Shanshan [Feng of China] and all the Korean players and players from Asia where opportunities may not be as available but when one is given the opportunity it’s amazing what they can do with it: that’s so important. It’s just giving people the opportunity and seeing what they can do. If they aren’t given the opportunity you never know what might have happened. You might have the next genius, but they can’t get into primary education; it’s important to give people a chance.”

Wie also took to the golf course as part of the event, which was the culmination of HSBC charity days across Asia that had already raised HK$1.5M for the UNICEF Child-Friendly Schools program in over 20 countries. The events are part of the bank’s build-up to next month’s WGC-HSBC Champions in Shanghai, the continent’s highest-ranked men’s tournament.

Wie singled that tournament out as an example of what Asia has been able to achieve once it got the chance to host top-quality golf. The HSBC Champions has been a World Golf Championship event since 2009. Meanwhile the women continue their “autumn swing” playing the inaugural Sunrise LPGA Taiwan Championship this week and the Mizuno Classic in Japan in two weeks time. They’ll return to Asia in February for the “spring swing” which normally includes the Honda LPGA Thailand and the HSBC Women’s Champions in Singapore.

“I think over the last few years the women’s tour has become very global, but watching the men’s tour on TV it’s also become very global as well. I think HSBC does a fantastic job of making world-class events and in Singapore and Shanghai you can see the results of that. Players love coming over here. It’s always a fun time. I love coming back to Singapore every year,” she said.

Paging the Asahi Shimbun

I've never had to call out an entire newspaper before, but after reading "S. Korean golfers dominate Japan, world," by Atsuo Negishi and Issei Sakakibara (courtesy of a thread at Seoul Sisters.com), I have to question the Asahi Shimbun's editorial judgment. The premise of the article is that the top men's and women's professional golf tours in Japan, the JGTO and JLPGA, are all of a sudden in danger because Kyung-Tae Kim and Sun-Ju Ahn, both South Koreans, each won their respective tour's money title in 2010. Oh, and because Korean women won 15 of 34 JLPGA events and 9 of 25 LPGA events in 2010. And because there are more Korean women ranked in the top 50 in the world than Japanese and Americans combined (20 vs. 19). And because Korean golfers dominated the Asian Games in 2006 and 2010. And because as the number of Koreans on the LPGA has increased, its schedule has shrunk. And because Carolyn Bivens floated an English-language requirement for LPGA membership. And because Japan's only and Asia's 1st winner of an American major is lobbying the Japanese government to increase funding to develop world-class Japanese women golfers. And because an anonymous tournament organizer implied Japanese tv viewers can't stand to see Japanese corporate types hand winner's checks to Korean winners of tournaments they sponsored. And because tv ratings went down significantly for the JLPGA's season-ending major, the Ricoh Cup. And because a Japanese tv producer envisions vague and dramatic globalization-induced changes.

Yeah, the whole thing is thinly-veiled, badly-organized, barely-thought-out editorializing--and my paraphrase actually attempted to find some coherence in the article's writing and reasoning. With its logic deficits, context gaps, and genre ambiguities, I doubt it would get better than a C- in any university-level intro to newspaper writing course (and that's after grade inflation). And yet it appeared on the English-language website of the Asahi Shimbun on January 7th!

I don't have time to do a full-blown critique--we just got back to our soon-to-be-old home from picking up the keys at the new one and are trying to push our own move up 3 days--so I'll just offer a sketch of one here.

(1) Shaky understanding of recent JLPGA history.

Consider a sentence like this: "The women's golf industry in Japan has succeeded and gained as much popularity as men's golf because female golfers became top prize winners. But this business model is becoming shaky."

What does this mean? Japanese women have been "top prize winners" on the JLPGA for its entire history, except when Ai-Yu Tu had great years and now, decades later, when Sun-Ju Ahn did. No, what kick-started the JLPGA to a new level was Ai Miyazato winning as a high schooler--and then continuing to win as a pro--on a tour that seemed utterly dominated by Yuri Fudoh. Their rivalry and all it symbolized fuelled the JLPGA's ascent and contributed to the JGTO's relative decline. Until Ai-chan left for--and struggled on--the LPGA, that is, and another high schooler won--and continued to win as a pro--on the JGTO. Ryo Ishikawa has more to do with any real or imagined shakiness of the JLPGA business model than any Korean golfer. And perhaps Mika Miyazato does, as well.

It's not like the authors are completely ignorant of this. Indeed, the sentences before the one I quoted covers virtually the same time period I discussed in the previous paragraph: "Female Japanese golfers have also been performing well and gaining in popularity since Ai Miyazato debuted as a teenager on the JLPGA Tour in 2004. In her footsteps have followed other talented young golfers such as Momoko Ueda, Miho Koga, Sakura Yokomine and Mika Miyazato." Never mind that Ai-chan's debut actually was in 2003, the real problem with the second sentence is the way it lumps Mika Miyazato, who's of an entirely different golfing generation than her sempai, into a follower of Ai-sama's footsteps. What makes Mikan distinctive is the way she didn't follow the Ai-sama path but instead chose to make her pro debut on the LPGA rather than the JLPGA. Given Mikan's big leap into the LPGA's top 20 and win and T2 in the 2 JLPGA majors she entered in 2010, she might well have provided a similar spark of a generational showdown that pushed the JLPGA to the forefront of public attention around 8 years ago had she decided to follow Ai-sama's path.

But let's face it, there's a deeper problem than lack of historical context going on here. Are the authors really claiming that the Japanese golf industry's "business model" is to hope for an extraordinarily talented Japanese teenager to come along and do nothing but wait for the next one? Where is the evidence that this really is the JLPGA's business model?

(2) Shaky use of logic and evidence.

Let me turn to a different passage that illustrates the severity and scope of these problems: "Japan is also fearing the affect [sic] that victories by South Korean golfers will have on corporate sponsors and ad revenue."

Putting aside the image of a personified Mt. Fuji appearing to one of the authors in a dream and the goddess Amaterasu appearing to the other, each with a mission to convey this urgent message on behalf of an anxious nation, as well as an error in word choice I see about 10 times a week from my own students (99% of whom grew up in English), this really is all about the affect--the feelings of Japanese television viewers and corporate executives. Here's the authors' Exhibit A:

TV viewer ratings stood at 12.4 percent when Sakura Yokomine won the last event of the 2009 JLPGA Tour, according to Video Research Ltd. But the ratings slipped to 7.6 percent when Park In-bee won the final tournament of 2010.

"When a non-Japanese golfer wins, viewers will change the channel before the corporate sponsor's presidents appear to hand out trophies," said a tournament organizer who wished to remain anonymous. "That's disappointing for corporate sponsors."

Clearly the convenient unsourced quote is meant to provide a gloss on the facts that precede it. But hold on just a second there. Rewind. Pause. Let's do a little experiment here. Read over my Ricoh Cup posts from 2009 (Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, Round 4) and 2010 (Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, Round 4). What did you notice? Perhaps something like this:

• Ai Miyazato and Momoko Ueda in the hunt in 2009. Not playing in 2010.
  
• Sakura Yokomine, Shinobu Moromizato, and Chie Arimura all vying to win the tournament and break Shiho Oyama's single-season-winnings record in the process in 2009. Sun-Ju Ahn having already clinched the money-list title the week before the Ricoh Cup in 2010, but without any hope of breaking any winnings record.
  
• Good scoring in 2009. Bad scoring in 2010.
  
• An exciting, wide-open shootout that came down to the final holes in 2009. A boring battle of attrition on Sunday in 2010.
  

Hmm, I'd say the nationality of the winner had everything to do with this year's lower ratings, wouldn't you? Me, I'd like to hear about the ratings of the final JGTO event, when Ryo Ishikawa had a tiny chance to steal the money-list title from Kyung-Tae Kim. How did they compare to the previous year's, when he and Yuta Ikeda were battling for #1 on the money-list but out of contention? There are so many more examples like this, but shooting fish in a barrel loses its luster after awhile. I mean, you can't even make sushi out of them. (3) Emphatic but ambiguous quotes. Here's what Hisako Higuchi is quoted as saying: "Japan only offers a few days of training while South Korea offers 200 days of training. There's no way we can beat the South Koreans under the current circumstances." This feels like a fragment from a longer conversation. Is she talking about the very best young Koreans, like Ji-Yai Shin, Na Yeon Choi, In-Kyung Kim, Song-Hee Kim, Inbee Park, and Sun-Ju Ahn? I wonder if each of them really received the same intensive training? Inbee Park played in the U.S. as an amateur, Song-Hee Kim got her start on the Futures Tour, and I'm not even sure if In-Kyung Kim ever played on the KLPGA, either. And who is that "we"? Certainly, none of Mika Miyazato's peer group has come close to realizing their potential as quickly as she's begun to realize hers. But let's not forget that Inbee Park and Sun-Ju Ahn have already endured slumps in their young careers and that Seon Hwa Lee, who a year and a half ago would have been near the head of anyone's list of top young Korean golfers, played so badly on the JLPGA in 2010 that she didn't even bother going back to Q-School. It's way too soon to tell how the new blood from both countries will stack up against each other, career-wise. Maybe the "we" speaks of up-and-coming Japanese youngsters, and maybe there Higuchi is trying to get across how far behind their Korean counterparts they are, but doesn't "no way" seem kind of extreme when you're talking about teenagers? OK, just one more quote, this time from "golf tournament producer" Sho Tobari (who I gather from the context is some kind of tv guy?). I can't tell if he's trying to say that Japanese professional tours need to start hosting tournaments outside Japan, allowing other tours to co-sponsor more events within Japan, accept that Japanese sponsors will start looking more to other tours, or some or all of the above:

"The next few years will be a period of dramatic change," said golf tournament producer Sho Tobari. "While the U.S. LPGA tour is reducing the number of tournaments, the European LPGA tour is aiming to expand its market size by becoming more international. Japan will be caught in that trend, too." [...] "In the short term, the golf tournament market in Japan may shrink, and the number of tournaments may decline," Tobari said. "But the golf market itself will not shrink. Corporate sponsors will have to consider ways to disseminate their message to the rest of the world and not just to the Japanese market."

Huh? What does this have to do with those darn Koreans again? Somebody help me out here! From where I sit, the JLPGA is looking like an increasingly attractive option for golfers from around the world who don't want to be part-time professionals. Some, like Mi-Jeong Jeon, who's quoted explaining why she loves competing in Japan, may even choose to make the JLPGA their only, or their primary, tour. But this is a sign of the strength of the JLPGA and its potential for future growth. What am I missing?

Recommended Reading: Lisa Mickey and Happy Fan Remind Us What Thanksgiving Is All About

Check out these amazing Thanksgiving stories from Happy Fan and Lisa Mickey when you get a chance tonight!

flora flora flora

How Low Can the AP Go?

I haven't made the effort to identify who's responsible for the latest U.S. Women's Open preview from the Associated Press, but talk about using old talking points! The title: "Americans No Longer Dominate U.S. Women's Open." The theme: how badly Americans have been doing lately against international competition on women's golf's biggest stage.

The problems:

(1) Even Beth Ann Baldry, who's not the best-informed writer on women's golf in the world, knows that Cristie Kerr is the favorite to survive and maybe even tame Oakmont. Yet our anonymous AP writer takes 5 seconds on LPGA.com's stats page and decides that because she "doesn't rank among the LPGA's Top 10 in driving distance, accuracy or putting," the fact that she's #1 in scoring average and putts per green in regulation, #2 in wins, winnings, Player of the Year points, rounds in the 60s, and rounds under par, #4 in birdies per round, and #5 in greens in regulation (72.2%) and top-10-finish rate--oh, and by the way, is averaging almost 257 yards off the tee, hitting 72.4% of her fairways, and averaging 28.68 putts per round--just doesn't matter. 2 wins in the last 3 events? Pshaw. A 2-tournament winning streak in her last 2 events entered? Not even worth mentioning.

And when he (I'll betcha anything a guy wrote this!) tries to praise Kerr, he even gets the storyline wrong:

Give her the 36- or 54-hole lead, like she owned last year at cross-state Saucon Valley before losing out to Ji, and it may be difficult to get it back.

Um, dude, Kerr had chances to win 2 majors last year and let them slip through her fingers. Nobody stepped up to challenge her in the LPGA Championship for any serious length of time. Kerr still has to prove she's a closer in majors. That and the fact that she won at Locust Hill with a leaky driver--something that Oakmont will penalize much more severely--are the doubts that any knowledgable writer should be emphasizing about Kerr's chances to get her 2nd Open, 3rd major, and 15th career victory on the LPGA. Read Mike Dudurich or Randall Mell or Tim Maitland if you want to understand where Cristie Kerr is this season. Not this hack.

(2) So when most writers (and even Seouls Sisters fans like bangkokbobby) are focusing on how important for the tour and how inspiring for other American golfers Kerr's dominating victory at the LPGA Championship has been--do you think it's a coincidence that Christina Kim almost followed Kerr's formula (change putters, get focused mentally, and bring it on) to the letter last week and moved from 73rd to 59th in the Rolex Rankings with her playoff loss to Na Yeon Choi in the process?--our dogged correspondent decides to dig even deeper. What has he discovered?

An American victory in its national championship, once all but a certainty, now would be a surprise. Cristie Kerr is the only American to win in the last five years and, since 1995, there have been nearly as many South Korean champions (4) as U.S. winners (5). By comparison, Americans won all but five Women's Opens from 1946-1994.

I have 2 responses. 1st, how is this news? The supposed lack of American dominance has been going on for 15 years! But 2nd, is it really fair to American golfers to hold them to a higher standard than the golfers of every other nation? Read that paragraph again: Americans have won the Open more time than golfers from any other nation in the world! We're still #1, baby! w00t!!

Let's break this down further. Of the 8 players last year with the best chance to win, 4 were American (including naturalized citizen Candie Kung). Even with Inbee Park winning by a comparatively large margin in 2008, 3 Americans were among the 9 in the mix at some point on that Sunday. Yeah, Cristie Kerr basically carried the flag alone when she won in 2007, but the year before that 4 Americans were challenging Annika Sorenstam (who beat Pat Hurst in a playoff) and Se Ri Pak among those few players less than 7 shots off Sorenstam's and Hurst's pace. In 2005, Birdie Kim beat 2 promising American amateurs, Morgan Pressel and Brittany Lang (who have since developed into elite professionals), by 2 shots with her miraculous walkoff hole-out from the bunker, and Natalie Gulbis made it 3 Americans in the top 5. My point in bringing up all this not-so-ancient history is that Americans have disproportionately been in the mix in the Open, even in the last few years when the women's game's globalization has intensified exponentially.

Yes, I know there's a big difference between being in contention and winning. My point is that expecting American domination on the LPGA is incredibly out-of-date, just as it would be to expect Korean domination, or Japanese domination, or Spanish domination--or, for that matter, any single country's domination. The world of women's golf is by no means flat, and its center of gravity may well have shifted to Asia sometime last decade, but that's all the more reason to face reality with something less than jaw-on-the-ground stupefaction and incredulity.

(3) The U.S. Women's Open has actually been the staging ground for a lot of American cinderellas in recent years, from Michelle Wie to Stacy Lewis to Alexis Thompson to Jean Reynolds. And as Stuart Hall points out, it's become the locus of a debate about attending college vs. turning pro for teenagers of all nationalities. It's pretty significant that long-heralded, big-hitting Hawaii native Kimberly Kim turned pro at about the same time that just-shy-of-Hall of Famer Meg Mallon announced her retirement, eh? And that, as David Shefter and Rhonda Glenn point out, there are plenty of great stories from other new pros and top amateurs--including Americans Jennifer Song (ok, she had dual citizenship with South Korea, so both countries get to claim her) and Tiffany Joh (who's made the Open for the 1st time in her life!).

(4) Finally, it's not like I'm loving the new flavor of the week--how gosh ding dang tough the USGA can make an already over-the-top Oakmont--but at least that one's a case of lowering casual viewer/reader expectations scoring-wise (when it's not an excuse for having fun with a damsels in distress storyline). Americans having just a slightly better chance of winning this Open than golfers from any other single country is just "dog bites man" these days.

Look, it's not that I'm expecting Pulitzer-prize winning material from the AP when it comes to covering the LPGA. I'd accept just basic competence, thank you very much. That, and this Stephanie Wei interview with Paige Mackenzie edited down into a short article and sent around to every newspaper in the country!

Mimi Channels the 60s, Morrison, the End

Nina Paley is the creator of Mimi & Eunice and is unleashing them on the world under a copyleft license.

Peace Now! - First Mix

Sakaki Rides a Dolphin in the New Savanna

Hey kids! I've set up a new blog, just around the corner. It's called New Savanna. And it's got photos and writing AND, a longish piece about a dolphin ride that I couldn't post at That Other Place. It's got about 10 seconds or so in Azumanga Daioh, one of the cutest anime series ever (for tweeners, I suppose).

Girls Playing Brass

There's a boy or two, but it's mostly girls. And they're fantastic!

It Must Run in the Family

Let's see, I can't seem to stop writing about golf, my brother works in the golf industry, my mom is comfortable chatting with professional golfers, and my dad now has an essay out in Christian Science Monitor on the ethics of golf. (It came out online yesterday but first appeared in the print version on my birthday, fittingly enough!)

Maybe someday I can even get him to do a guest spot here at Mostly Harmless. Here's an idea: I'll make sure he reads the comments on this post and see if he wants to respond to the commenters....

Golf History has taken a new turn

The world has changed, if only just a bit: Y E Yang wins the PGA championship, the first Asian to win a major golf championship.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Best Blogs on Women's Golf

In the off-season, I started a series on the best blogs on women's golf to try to draw some attention to the bloggers whose writing and perspectives I value the most. Of course, Hound Dog LPGA was at the top of my list, followed by Waggle Room and Seoul Sisters (a spin-off from the amazingly informative Seoul Sisters.com site). At a time when many fans are recycling Yellow Peril/Asian invasion discourses to put down the LPGA, finding it difficult to connect with players whose languages and cultures are different from their own, or hungering for more information about a wider range of players than the national media typically focuses on, I thought it was time to say a bit more about some of the bloggers I feature in the Mostly Harmless Golfarama sidebar.

Let's start with 2 veteran LPGA bloggers from whom I've learned a great deal.

Bill Jempty started golf blogging as the Florida Masochist and is now the editor at OTB Sports. He writes on Florida sports in general, but his passion is the LPGA. He's one of the 1st LPGA bloggers who really stood out to me back in 2007. He was one of the earliest and most trenchant critics of now-ex-LPGA Commissioner Carolyn Bivens, is a tireless critic of gaffes by golf journalists, and one of the first golf bloggers to seek and get media credentials to cover a tournament. You may not always agree with Bill, but you're going to have to think hard about why you don't. If you like fiery, provocative, combative, but always well-informed golf blogging, then he's your guy.

Brent Kelley is About.com's golf guide, so it's no surprise that terms like thoughtful, judicious, clear, and comprehensive spring to mind to characterize his writing on golf in general and the LPGA in particular. Browse through his blog archives and you'll see what I mean. It's not that he's unwilling to take a stand, but you can be confident that he'll have explored an issue from every angle before offering his perspective. Take, for example, the Michelle Wie follies of 2008. He had the best take on her DQ at the State Farm and her absence from the Women's British Open of anyone out there. Yup, when Brent Kelley speaks, people listen. At least people with any sense do.

Now let's turn to a pair of newer writers who are finding their feet and their voices and deserve even larger audiences.

Stephanie Wei started Wei Under Par back in March and since then has distinguished herself as a blogger/vlogger with great access to players like Christina Kim, Jeehae Lee, Anna Grzebien, Paige Mackenzie, and Ryan Moore (as well as caddies) and great insight into political, economic, and cultural issues facing the LPGA. What's more, she writes with heart, humor, and style.

Brian Heard at Women's Golf Center is doing a fantastic job profiling a wide range of Korean, Taiwanese, and Japanese players on the LPGA and identifying the latest trends and tough issues on tour.

So there you have it, 7 bloggers to check in on regularly. But also worth checking out are Golf Girl, Golf Babes, and Cross-Court Birdies.

Among the player-bloggers out there, I'm enjoying Tiffany Joh, Momoko Ueda, and Louise Friberg the most. (Maybe if I could read Japanese I'd add Ai Miyazato, Shiho Oyama, and Miho Koga.) You can see which players, journalists, bloggers, and tournaments I'm following on Twitter if you're curious about how micro-blogging-meets-social-networking works.

The point is, there's actually plenty of good information and great stories out there in the golfoblogosphere. If you combine that with the kind of local coverage of LPGA events that Golf Observer follows and the international scope of Asian Golf Daily, you'll have gone from better-informed fan to women's golf expert-in-the-making!

[Update 1 (7/17/09, 3:02 pm): Please help Hound Dog celebrate his 3-year blogiversary!]

All Hail 3Tops-san

Ashes to ashes

Paint to paint

Where 3Tops was

Now 3Tops ain't

Kraft Nabisco Championship Sunday: Lincicome! Lincicome! Lincicome!

Congratulations to Brittany Lincicome, your winner of the Kraft Nabisco Championship!

Go to Armchair Golfer for the deciding hole and reaction from the winner. Go to Golf Babes for the capsule summary of Lincicome's last 2 years. Go to Michael Arkush for the USA! USA! angle. Go to Bill Jempty for his quick reaction. But, if you're a true LPGA aficionado, you'll go to Hound Dog for his live blog and overview/reaction. Not to mention LPGA.com for decidedly better notes than was the norm in previous seasons as well as interviews with Lincicome and the two runner-ups, Cristie Kerr and Kristy McPherson.

OK, now you're ready to tackle the AP story--not a bad effort by Bernie Wilson, but I'll take Randall Mell's article (and his on-course blogging, which once again kicked The Tour Blog's Sean Martin's and Beth Ann Baldry's butts). And, finally, Golf Channel's highlights, interviews, and analysis. Well done, y'all!

As for me, I had left off checking the leaderboard while still waiting to see if Suzann Pettersen could eagle 18 to put some pressure on the leaders down the stretch--onechan and imoto had a playdate at a playground and with them it takes forever to get ready to get out the door. Once I got back home, it didn't take me long to realize that her par there made her bogey-free 66 moot (betcha she wishes she could have borrowed Sun Young Yoo's walkoff eagle--they would have had a 61 best-ball, btw). I also had been in some personal suspense as to whether Ai Miyazato (my favorite player) could hold off Michelle Wie and avoid last place (she couldn't but did). Mostly, though, I had been curious to see if McPherson could become the 1st player all season on the LPGA to turn a 3rd-round lead into an LPGA victory. Instead, Kerr had seemed to be pulling an Ochoa--when the world #1 passed Paula Creamer on the front back in Thailand and never looked back--which made my belated discovery of her bogey-birdie-double stretch midway through the back a big shock. In retrospect, Kerr's stumbles off the tee could have brought almost the entire field back into the tournament, except that really they just kept Lincicome alive. (I kept waiting for Lindsey Wright to get hot after that eagle in the par-5 11th--just like I waited for Meaghan Francella to return to the form that saw her birdie 4 of her 1st 6 holes and get to -6. But Wright parred out and so did Francella, after a bogey on the 7th. No Sunday free-for-all, after all.)

And what a way to take advantage of the moment for Lincicome! Here's someone who had finished out of the money on a Florida mini-tour event while the LPGA was on its early-season Asian Swing in early March. What a difference a month makes! Just last week, I was complimenting her for making 2 consecutive cuts and shooting 3 rounds of par or better in a row. She may be forgiven for having considered that an April Fool's Day joke, as it seems I haven't said anything complimentary about her play in a couple of years. To tell you the truth, I had thought Bill Jempty was more than a little foolish to name her his comeback player of the year in his preseason predictions! Her 1 top 10 last season had come out of nowhere, and unlike 2007 when she followed up her runner-up at the KNC and win at the Ginn with 9 top 20s, her 2008 only had one other decent result, a top 15 against a relatively weak field in Mexico, while the rest was simply horrible--11 missed cuts, a DQ at the Ginn Tribute, and, of her 10 finishes in the money, only 1 other was even in the top 30.

The challenge for Brittany now will be to avoid going MIA once again, as she did after that 2nd career LPGA win. She had always seemed uncomfortable with the Young Americans hype back in late 2006 and early 2007. I distinctly recall an interview not long after that win where she basically admitted she wasn't ready to devote herself to her game enough to compete against the best in the world, so I wasn't at all surprised that she struggled over the rest of the season, nor was I surprised at her undistinguished Solheim Cup performance. At some point in 2008 I figured she had crossed the same kind of event horizon as Julieta Granada and might never escape her own personal black hole. Turns out it was some weird kind of wormhole! A combination of a major off-season swing change and a commitment to better conditioning and not getting down on herself after a bad shot was all she needed. Now she sounds excited about the Solheim Cup, which is a good thing, because she's 1 of 15 players scrapping it out for those top 10 spots. Nobody's going to knock Paula Creamer, Cristie Kerr, or Angela Stanford off the U.S. team, but with just less than 120 points separating #4 and #15, anything can happen, particularly when you consider that Lincicome's win in this week's major earned her exactly 120 points and put her at the top of the heap in a crowded Player of the Year race!

Viva the Corona in 2 weeks! Should have a great field....

[Update 1 (3:45 am): Nice job by Karen Crouse for the NYT and Brent Kelley for about.com!]

[Update 2 (4:24 am): Nice to see the SI guys remember there was an LPGA major this week. Although I guess it's too much to expect Bamberger to remember the LPGA's going to Torrey Pines this year.]

[Update 3 (4:30 am): Hope somebody from CBS takes note of Bradley Klein's critique. And that at some point the Constructivist household can afford to upgrade the cable modem to include, well, tv.]

[Update 4 (11:45 am): Here's Hound Dog's epilogue.]

[Update 5 (10:27 pm): Nice of Golf Babes to show Tiffany Joh some love, but The Squire missed out on 2 key things everyone needs to know about T-Joh: 1) she was a leader on the Curtis Cup U.S. team; 2) she was a Waggle Room guest blogger back when Mulligan Stu was running the joint.]

[Update 6 (10:33 pm): Pretty awesome little essay over at Golf Channel by Annika Sorenstam on watching the end of the final round. A lot more substantive than what she usually posts on her own blog.]

[Update 7 (4/7/09, 12:45 pm): Nice piece by Daniel Wexler on Lincicome's win and the struggles of the LPGA's elite players at Mission Hills.]

[Update 8 (12:54 pm): Enjoyed Steve Elling's LPGA-centric ups and downs piece, even if I completely disagree with one of his premises. Guess which one!]

[Update 9 (12:58 pm): Gotta love Gerald Gallagher's case for the KNC being the most exciting major in golf. Wonder if all the writers dwelling on the recent lack of Masters Sunday excitement will draw the connection?]

[Update 10 (4/9/09, 12:10 am): Great overview by Ron Sirak! When he's on, he's on. I'd love to see him give Seon Hwa Lee the Lincicome treatment next time she wins!]

Vagaries of Golf Journalism

A few puzzlers for you all as we head into the pre-Masters frenzy that consistently overshadows the Kraft Nabisco Championship.

Why is it that Jason Sobel knows how to write a great piece on the coming changing of the guard in the world of men's professional golf, as heralded by Rory McIlroy, Danny Lee, and Ryo Ishikawa, but nobody knows how to write about the exact same thing that's been happening on the LPGA over the last several years--except to whine about the lack of American dominance? Recent writing on the LPGA has felt like a bad flashback to the late '90s--anyone remember how golf journalists then were more anxious than excited at the fact that the international trio of Annika Sorenstam, Karrie Webb, and Se Ri Pak was pushing a generation of great American stars down the leaderboard? Where's the journalist today to declare that the transnationalism of the LPGA's Young Guns and New Blood is something to be celebrated?

It stands to reason that Ron Sirak would be your man for the job. Why, then, didn't he save his column on the holes in the LPGA's schedule for next week and produce as good a preview of the competition then to come in the very strong field at the J Golf Phoenix International last week as good as his Kraft Nabisco Championship preview this one? (Although even in the recent one it would have been great to end with a look at the current contenders as searching as his look at the course and the ways past champions won on it. Is he worried about what Brent Kelley has recently noted--that the LPGA's 1st major has no clear favorite?) The irony here is that Jon Show, who's done as much as anyone to document the LPGA's financial crisis, came out with the most optimistic article in recent memory on the LPGA's prospects the very same week Sirak decided to write on the schedule rather than the players in Phoenix.

Look, Sirak is a talented writer, as his profile of twin sisters Aree and Naree Song shows. But when is he going to get comfortable with the fact that he can't just replicate his success with Annika Sorenstam today with Michelle Wie? With the rise of Ji-Yai Shin, Ya Ni Tseng, Seon Hwa Lee, and Angela Park, joined by another couple of dozen international golfers international players who are capable of winning any given week (and, yes, naturalized U.S. citizen Park is joined by Morgan Pressel, Brittany Lang, Jane Park, Vicky Hurst, and, yes, Wie, to name a few Americans who have already excelled in this cohort), golf journalists who focus on the LPGA have to get a handle on more players and story lines than just the stuff that flies on the PGA: the awesomeness of Tiger's awesome awesomeness and the follow-the-will'o'wisp search for a legitimate rival for him. This is most definitely the Ochoa Era on the LPGA, but the PGA's future is the LPGA's present: that changing of the guard that Sobel wrote about coming in the next 10 years there is happening here right now. When will Sirak write about that?

Speaking of present and future PGA revolutionaries, I want to give credit to Jaime Diaz and Max Adler for writing fantastic profiles of Tiger's mom Tida (in the great Steve Elling tradition) and Danny Lee, respectively. Don't get me wrong, Corina Knoll got some great tidbits in her idiot's guide to identifying some of the top players of Korean descent on the LPGA (outdoing Matt Cooper's fine survey), but wouldn't it be nice for some of them to get the long-form treatment? Until then, we'll just have to endure more great American hope stories, I guess.

[Update 1 (4/3/09, 12:34 am): Hey, is Randall Mell a MH reader? Probably not, but nice job on the Ochoa-Shin pairing and its larger significance, Randall!]

Lisa Strom Is the Bomb

Do yourself a favor and listen to Karen Palacios-Jensen and Ken Hartis (aka Hound Dog) interview LPGA veteran Lisa Strom on Inside the LPGA this week. Lisa has all kinds of interesting things to say about Lorena Ochoa, Michelle Wie, and Stacy Prammanasudh, not to mention her Q-School experience (where she tied Wie and played the final day with Mika Miyazato). And Hound Dog and Karen do as good a job as the Wegmans podcasters did with her last summer. But the most interesting thing to me in the entire interview was the glimpse Lisa gave into what those players who don't qualify for the limited-field events in the LPGA's early-season Asian swing do to stay sharp.

She and my old golfing buddy Moira Dunn are currently in the middle of the pack in this week's SunCoast Series event. Jeehae Lee (70) and M.J. Hur (69) are among the many LPGA players near the front of the pack after the 1st round. The series regulars are not playing for big money--as their 2009 money list shows--but instead to get ready for the opportunities that come their way to play on the LPGA and Futures Tour.

Anhone who thinks golf is a rich man's game should try following the ladies of the SunCoast Series around for a round or two.

April Is the Cruelest Month for the LPGA in '09...but for '10?

Now that the dust has settled from last week's disturbing news that Ginn is ending their sponsorship of both their LPGA and Champions Tour events, it's clear that the Ginn Open is gone and the LPGA's April is looking mighty thin. If it weren't for their events in Asia and Mexico this winter and early spring, the LPGA would have one tournament each in February, March, and April--assuming they are able to line up a course in Phoenix to host their late-March event.

If I were Commissioner, here's what I'd be doing right now to shore up the LPGA's spotty spring for 2010. First, I'd open up talks with the heads of the KLPGA, JLPGA, LET, and ALPG to explore the possibility of some serious co-sponsorship in winter and early spring '10. I'm talking setting up an extended Asian-Pacific Swing to start off the LPGA season, like so:

January: kick off the 2010 women's professional golf season with a bang at the HSBC Women's World Match Play in Rio (top 64 Rolex Rankings, co-sponsored by LPGA, JLPGA, KLPGA, and LET), then fly the LPGA's best back to Florida for the revived ADT--yes, ADT--Championship.

February: join the LET and ALPG in co-sponsoring the two big Australian events, then offer the JLPGA co-sponsorship of the LPGA's Thailand event and craft a similar deal with the KLPGA and a Korean transnational to flesh out the shortest month of the year.

March: end the Asian swing with the HSBC Women's Champions event, then move the SBS Open after it to bring the tour back to the States (and provide a kickoff for those who couldn't get into the previous events or who didn't want to travel to Asia), before heading to Mexico for 2 weeks for the MasterCard Classic and Corona Championship (the latter moved up from April).

April: make the Phoenix event the last tune-up before the the year's first major, the Kraft Nabisco Championship, which closes out the Asian-Pacific Swing and comes the week after the Masters to capitalize on media coverage. Then build in a 2-week break before kicking off the Eastern Swing, hopefully with an event in May to precede the Michelob Ultra.

That's 12 LPGA events to kick off the 2010 season, 4 of them in the States. Unlike the fall Asian-Pacific Swing, this one would consist mostly of full-field events with cuts. Setting up the schedule this way would keep the mid-level pros on the LPGA happy and competitive, as spots would open up for those lower down the money list and world rankings when some of the top players decide to limit their early-season jet-setting. But there are still 4 major-quality events in the swing and a few others that might come to rival the Phoenix event in prestige, assuming the best off the LPGA decide to play golf in Australia and southeast Asia in February. Moreover, all the major women's tours would expand their lineups and save money (by pooling their resources), while the golfy media would find it easier to focus on women's golf (as many of the top PGA golfers play quite limited winter schedules).

My next move would be to do whatever it takes to beef up the LPGA's May-July stateside schedule and end their strange tradition of a summer vacation in August. If that means crawling back to ShopRite on hands and knees, so be it. If that means starting up some new events with only a $1M purse and a reduced fee to the tournament organizers, so be it. The LPGA needs to face reality and offer discount, basic, and premium tiers to locations and sponsors willing to take a bet on Lorena Ochoa, Paula Creamer, Michelle Wie, and the other LPGAers who are off the national radar compared to them. Better to have relatively few breaks between May and October, particularly if it means moving into markets with relatively large populations of Asian and Latino heritage, than to hold the line on a pre-financial crisis strategic plan. When the worldwide economy recovers, the tour and its members will be well-positioned for massive growth.

Finally, I'd lay the groundwork for that kind of growth by immediately pursuing a full-spectrum new media strategy--not just as a back-up plan in case the 2010-2015 network tv contract turns out to be a flop (I still owe everyone a post explaining my odd optimism on this), but, and more important, as an effort to reach and hook new fans, ages 5 and up, by getting them interested in a wide range of LPGA players. Hound Dog is on the right track here, but I'd go further. Start by choosing 1 hole per weekend round and connecting a live cam to the web all day on it, following 1 pairing around per round in live streaming video, providing longer post-round highlights than you can get on Golf Channel directly on LPGA.com, and turning each player page into a portal for interaction as well as information (with links to an FAQ [frequently asked questions] page, a form for asking questions of them, their blog, Facebook page, archived interviews, profiles, and features in the media and blogosphere [not that hard to do, what with rss and all these days], not to mention lots and lots of photos and videos, for each player). I've heard a lot about making LPGA.com a must-see site, but seen little effective action so far. That needs to change.

A related move consists of developing different tactics for different target markets who haven't yet moved to the LPGA in large enough numbers and restructuring LPGA.com to include cute stuff for girls, reality-tv stuff for teenagers and young adults, fashion stuff for single women, hot stuff for single guys, family stuff for the rest of us, and funny stuff for everyone (more of Christina Kim, Jane Park, Minea Blomqvist, and other great interviews). Yeah, that's stereotypical, but the list can be expanded and fine-tuned. The key is to use each target marketing tactic to tell part of the main story and contribute to the central strategy: the LPGA is both a truly global tour and the face of a new America. That means celebrating the tour's diversity and no longer betting the farm on the appeal of a handful of mostly blonde American stars. That means giving people a chance to confront and rethink their stereotypes about the tour and its players. That means creating an LPGA blog and assembling the tour's best writer-players to join Lisa Mickey in getting different kinds of stories out, dialoging with good commenters, engaging the best bloggers on women's golf, and influencing the golfy media.

The key in all this is giving a wide range of people from around the world both reason to check out the LPGA and a variety of ways to go from being a casual checker-inner to becoming a committed fan. You build a committed online fan base and that translates to better attendance, better participation in pro-ams, better ratings, better coverage, and (eventually) better sponsorships, tv deals, and overall revenues. If Barack Obama was the first Presidential candidate to really get the possibilities of new media, why shouldn't the LPGA aim to become the first professional golf tour to replicate his success?

I would love to see the LPGA striving to break the 35-event barrier in 2010 for the first time since 2001 (rather than scrambling to avoid breaking 30 in the other direction) and laying the groundwork for the best decade in their history. They certainly have the young talent already on tour and on their way to provide compelling competition as the Ochoa Era enters its post-Sorenstam phase. Now they need to figure out how to provide them more and better venues and more and better-informed coverage.