Gary Player stood on the tee, hitting balls into the Pacific. Wimp.

I make the green on my first try.

Mauna Kea, #3 ... timeless

Mauna Kea Golf Course’s o’er moana 272-yard par-3 3^rd hole is iconic, trend-setting. If it’s true, that adage about imitation and flattery, then the club has adulation to spare. Designed way back in the early ‘60s by Robert Trent Jones, Sr., long before the Kohala Coast was studded with all-star golf courses and world-beating resorts, the hole and the course set the bar high for seaside-golf-to-come on all the Hawaiian islands.

Jones’ kid Rees orchestrated a complete overhaul of Mauna Kea, and the course reopened in 2012 with new turf throughout, reclaimed bunkers (and a host of new ones), a couple-hundred-yard tweak on the scorecard and, most importantly, reclaimed relevance.  There’s quite a bit of room to “err” things out on most holes. The payback for that generosity is wavecrest bunkering that Rees designed to ensure little chance of successfully reaching in regulation. After that, players still have to deal with old man Jones’ prototypical green complexes—acutely raised, deep and rambling, robed in false fronts and sides, and more sand.

Welcome back, old friend.

Player?  The story goes that warming up for a grand opening exhibition, the Black Knight, playing alongside the King and the Golden Bear, had trouble spanning the oceanic expanse from the then 250-or-so-yard back tee. So they moved up. Even facing 30-40 more yards, I have a huge advantage over Player—his driver was the size of a pea and his ball an imbalanced marshmallow.

Player hit the green when it mattered.

So did I.

He’s not the one who three-jacked.

What we have here is just a big bad stinky case of horrid decision-making, and it’s the kind of stuff that makes golf look more and more like the sports we don’t want it to be.  To wit:

Remember Blayne Barber?

He’s the guy who thought he’d brushed a leaf playing a shot from a bunker in the first stage of last year’s Q School.

Thought.

His caddie said “no way,” he was watching the shot intently and in no uncertain terms said no leaf was disturbed.

Barber thought otherwise and so, after successfully completing the stage, retroactively DQd himself for signing an inaccurate scorecard.

Goodbye any shot at a card for 2013; the last year Q School would lead to the big show.

Doug Barron was suspended by the PGA Tour in 2009 for using substances prescribed by a doctor that nonetheless ran afoul of the tour’s drug policy even if it gave him no competitive advantage.

Barron had applied for and been denied a use exemption, though at least one other player had been granted such an allowance for one of the substances denied Barron. Since Barron didn’t exactly run off a record of Armstrongian dimension, it kinda brings to mind the quip that was going around the tour with the advent of drug testing: If Tiger Woods tested clean, did it really matter how juiced everyone else was? Regardless, having asked and been told no, Barron – a journeyman’s journeyman – found himself on the outside looking in.

Yep, the powers that run this game helped themselves to two big fat mulligans since Masters’ Friday, which is ironic because does anything drive a golf aristocrat more batshitz than the proverbial breakfast ball?

In both Dropgate and L’affaire Singh, golf had a great chance to show that it doesn’t only target 14-year-old kids and backmarkers.

Y’all need a do-over of your do-overs, boys.

Now the Vijay matter isn’t as cut-and-dried as the spin doctors of the PGA Tour wanted it to be. In a nutshell, Vijay was facing disciplinary action for taking a substance for which he did not test positive and that, as we just learned, might not be a problematic substance after all and of course there is no way to even detect it using the testing protocols employed by the tour, though several players have said they might run out and give it a try since it provides a documented benefit.

WTF?

Exactly.

The tour is now saying deer-antler spray is no longer banned but warned players that at some point the “violative substance” contained in it could get them popped even though WADA says there is no baseline, biological-passport detection procedure and you might get just as much of the stuff in a good dose of milk.

WTF?

Exactly.

I guess the bottom line is that the tour is guilty of two things: Having a lip-service testing protocol and not moving more timely on Singh’s case, perhaps so that Augusta did not have one of its past champions attending Banned Camp. With that delay, the substance he took that the tour did not scientifically know he took was taken off the World Anti-Doping Agency’s banned list before Veej could be disciplined, though Finchem says discipline for its use might be coming even though they can’t or won’t test for it.

WTF?

Exactly.

I actually like the Surly Fijian. I don’t know him, but I like his candor – even as he was being a Neanderthal relative to Annika – and the few times I’ve had occasion to talk to him he’s been approachable and open. He also apparently was very forthright during the recent investigation. So, no this isn’t borne of disdain. Veej, you are guilty, however, of being an obstinate bonehead for putting yourself in that spot in the first place.

It’s Tim Finchem and the tour that gets the Emperor-Has-No-Clothes Award for a testing protocol long on sizzle and way short on steak.

And reasoned compassion.

Now the watershed whoops, the egregrious gaffe came during that tournament where everyone save a few hardy souls try damn hard to prove – and typically succeed – that golf reporting in early April is just another form of PR puffery.

One of THE fundamental, core, foundational elements of golf is that the player must ensure that his or her score is accurate.

Period.

When a player fails to do so, the punishment is and long has been and must continue to be a trip to the gulag, golf-style. The player must know the rules of golf and apply them accordingly, and if something as complex as dropping from a hazard for the kagillionth time in a player’s life is too hard to fathom, tour players are accorded access to rules officials.

Hello, ask the damn question.

I can hear it now, and just stow it: It is exactly because of arm-chair law-enforcers and HDTV that the correct-or-gone rule needs to remain on the books. I don’t care if the top players are under greater scrutiny since they spend more time on the air. Do you think Jerry Kelly, 2012’s Mr. 126, would refuse to change places with Rory simply because someone with not enough to do might spot him making a bad mark on the green?

Tiger screwed the pooch. He broke the rules of golf, did not account for it on his scorecard and to add to it all, he provided the evidence during his interview. What could be more cut-and-dried?

I don’t care about Fred Ridley’s rationalization. I am offended by Jim Nantz’s creampuff “interview” on the matter. (And the Faldo Fold was glorious to watch; pathetic but glorious.) Yes, I get that there is now an allowance for other than a DQ under extenuating circumstances.

And that is exactly what is wrong with this change; you can’t define extenuating and absent specificity the rules get cloudy, and when the rules are hazed over they become guidelines, and something other than hard-and-fast regulations are enforceable only through whim and folly and the interpretation of extenuating circumstance.

It does not matter that the committee reviewed the non-infraction infraction and decided not to call Tiger in at that point, thereby allowing him to sign an inaccurate scorecard. He did it. If he wasn’t on TV, signed the card and still flapped his gums about the drop, he’d have been sent packing. Who knew what, when, and what they decided to do or not do is not material to the case. If anyone is freaking out over the supposed inequity of the best players being under more HD scrutiny well here is a concrete example of that exposure being, in practice, an unfair playing advantage.

The non-intercession intercession of Ridley and Co. is irrelevant.  Tiger took an illegal drop and signed an inaccurate scorecard. He screwed up twice. It is not the responsibility of the “committee” to safeguard a player at the expense of every other rule of golf and the playing field.

Case.

Closed.

The lesson to Barber and Barron and everyone else now seems to be ignorance of the rules is bliss. Or at least something like a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Or maybe it’s simply about your position in the pantheon.

 “Mr. Van Vechten, you’re on the first tee.  Mr. Van Vechten. … Sir.”

Prince Course, #18 and Clubhouse

The starter rouses me from fantasy and I see it is reality. Such is the power of island golf, where the game is evocative and majestic, not just a game.

And I’m still on the practice tee.

The Garden Isle

Princeville’s Prince Course reopened last spring following a revamp by original designer Robert Trent Jones, Jr.  While some yardage was added, the key restoration efforts included reclaiming fairway margins, improving sightlines, remodeling bunkers and reconstructing green surrounds and re-turfing greens with paspalum. Call it a needed nip and tuck as the bones of the place remain, meaning non-returning nines and holes scampering about 400 rolling, banking, leaping, cascading, jungle-tangle-incised acres.

Untouched, blessedly, is the IMAX-grade expanse of north shore Kauai’s visual spectacle: gossamer waterfalls, Bali Hai, the north shore break.

Even from ability-appropriate tees, Prince is a stern test, rigorous; hell, it’s just hard and I even say inappropriate for high handicappers. I’m cool with that. Flat courses with parallel fairways are boring and golf is a game of earned reward not entitlements. Prince is a thrill ride. What you see is what you get, and when you can’t see play to what the full-info GPS—an artificially overloading intrusion of TMI most places—gives you and limit visits with Mowgli and Baloo.

Set between Prince and the neighboring Makai Course, Westin’s Princeville Ocean Resort Villas offers studio, one- and two-bedroom kitchen-and-laundry units in a casually elegant residential-resort setting. The bluff-top setting serves up ocean views from many units, waterfall-draped mountains from others. Two secluded adult pools, a family activity pool and one just for the keiki provide water-time fun for those who choose not to clamber down the nearby path to the shore. Barbecues are arrayed throughout the site, with cabanas and tables. Other amenities include dining, spa services, kids’ activities, and a gym. Though an ownership property, half the occupants are guests who can book through Westin and third-party sites.

Kauai Lagoons, Kiele Moana nine, #5

The names are an auditory twister.  The sea spray on #5 tells my nose in no uncertain terms where I am. The renovation is an eye stunner.  Sensory sensation is an essential part of the playing experience at new-look Kauai Lagoons Golf Club, even if that includes a few birds winging in to Lihue airport.

As with other top plays on the island—Prince, Makai, Poipu Bay—Kauai Lagoons has had a date with the plastic surgeon, who in this iteration looks remarkably like the greatest golfer ever, Jack Nicklaus, who coincidentally designed the joint in the first place.  The tale of the tape shows several new holes and nine fewer overall—for a total of 27.  New bunkers and greens re-clad with putter-friendly and less-snakey/more racy TifEagle highlight the ocean side of the course, which sports what is reported to be the longest stretch of contiguous ocean-front holes in the mid-Pacific. For families and the just-off-the-plane, get-in-a-quick-nine crowd, the restoration project set aside the Kiele Waikahe nine for user-friendly play.

The alpha routing consists of the Kiele Mauka and Kiele Moana nines, in respective order.   Mature and solid, Mauka harbors a few forced carries over barrancas not anticipated on such a plot of land, with wide, bending fairways sideboarded in dense stands of mango and guava and all other manner of tropical foliage. Downwind holes play monstrous long, even from other than the hero tees. Proving the golf gods get humor, I birdie the 453-yard left-sweeping par-4 4^th despite a hairy lie—it is tropics-fueled Bermuda—a green draped in three beaches worth of sand and today’s wind that is definitely not prevailing.  Mauka is next in line for an appointment with the Golden Bear for new bunkers and greens.

The new holes, greens, white silica bunkers and verve show up on Moana, where along the northerly cliff face of Nawiliwili Bay—from the 4^th hole approach to the climb up to eight tee, roughly Ninini Point to Kuki’i Point—players quickly learn the translation of “moana.” With that big blue roiling away just below, saw-topped, emerald-clothed mountains rising beyond, the either-side-of-200-yard 5^th is Kauai Lagoon’s entry into the islands’ best over-the-cove hole contest.

Moana traces an arc around Marriott Vacation Club Kauai Lagoons, a four-story complex of 72 two- and three-bedroom condos with course, moana, bay, pool and mountain views. Full kitchen in marble and stainless anchors a great room with a slideaway glass wall to a large lanai.  Rooms are spread to the periphery of each unit to give needed family and friend space while vacationing together. The resort concierge can arrange off-site excursions, from ATV rides to scuba, and a shuttle gives guests access to the course, tennis center and the Kauai Marriott Resort & Beach Club; be a turista, it’s OK, have dinner on the sand at Duke’s. …

Stay tuned for the next installment in this four-island golf getaway.

Well, Mr. Wordsworth, that’s exactly why the best rounds carry over to an additional “hole.”

Wailea? Why Not!? (Emerald Course, #1)

Go anywhere you want in the vibrant, diverse American West and you’ll find a stunning spot for some of that strenuous idleness. What you might not recognize is a grill, bar, restaurant—19^th hole—that is just as noteworthy. Be it adult beverages, food, setting or even history, from surf to saguaro here are some spots worthy of a post-round idle; the golf doesn’t exactly bite, either.

Eats

The Tavern at Princeville by Roy Yamaguchi

Prince Golf Course, Princeville, Kauai

http://tavernbyroy.com/

19th: The brainchild of one of Hawaii Regional Cuisine’s co-creators, The Tavern pairs gastro-pub comfort with Yamaguchi’s usual repertoire of slow food meets Pacific Rim. Lunch options range from local tomato and rocket flatbread to a carnivore’s-delight meatloaf sando to steamed catch-of-the-day in a hot and sour broth. At dinner, it’s a no-lose call between parmesan-crusted fish and braised short ribs. And don’t forget the carb-and-dairy-happy sides—Tavern mac, bacon-cheddar mashers, cheesy grits.

First 18: Recently treated to a wall-to-wall refresh, Prince again goes toe-to-toe with Kapalua’s Plantation Course and the Big Island’s Mauna Kea and Mauna Lani in the ring of Hawaiian golf supremacy. Alternately skirting and leaping the jungle lushness of Kauai’s North Shore, Prince is a play as noted for its drop-dead scenery as its demanding – if not quirky – Robert Trent Jones, Jr. design.

Drink

Catalina Barbeque Co. & Sports Bar

Starr Pass Golf Club, Tucson

http://jwmarriottstarrpass.com

19th: Not just drink, but Margaritas, which is eminently fitting here in the Old Pueblo, down near Mexico way. There are several cardinal rules to making a proper Margarita, and Catalina pays them allegiance.  Nothing is blended.  There’s no such thing as strawberry or peach. The sweet-and-sour is house-made. The tequila is bueno, not Jose-in-college grade, and silver. Triple Sec is banished. “Catalina” gets fresh lime and a float of Chambord; “Cadillac” is splashed in fresh orange and Grand Marnier. Both get Patron. These refreshers have few peers in desert post-golfdom.

Catalina at Starr Pass

            First 18: Truth be told, the number at Starr Pass is 27, but saying “let’s beat feet to the 28^th hole” just doesn’t resonate. The golf here once challenged the PGA Tour’s best, who complained about its severity. Hacks love the audacity of rock, cactus and arroyo through which the course is woven.

History

The Tap Room

Pebble Beach Golf Links, Pebble Beach

http://www.pebblebeach.com

19^th: While it might seem criminal to end a day at America’s most iconic seaside course hunkering down indoors, with no view of what Robert Louis Stevenson deemed “the most felicitous meeting of land and sea,” rounds at Pebble are notoriously slow, offering a good five hours or more to soak in all that aesthetic goodness. The Tap Room is an essential part of the Pebble experience. Kick aside the popcorn shrimp and Buffalo wings from the appy menu and you have a perfectly time-capsuled setting of gin martinis, Prime beef, liveried staff and a Smithsonian Light lesson in the near-century history of the course, it’s beloved “Clambake”—now corporately dressed up as the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am—and the five U.S. Opens contested on the grounds.

First 18: It’s Pebble.  What more needs to be said?

View

Gannon’s, A Pacific View Restaurant

Wailea Golf Club, Wailea, Maui

http://www.gannonsrestaurant.com 

            19^th Hole: While Gannon’s—named for owner/restaurateur/chef Bev Gannon, another of the originating “regionalists”—is notable for its island cuisine, a short-order jock slinging plates of spam musubi and loco moco could earn a Michelin star simply because of the jaw-dropping setting of the restaurant and bar. The immediate view is of green course and black lava, puffed over in the vibrant shocks of bougainvillea. Beyond is Big Blue and the right shoulder of Kahoolawe. Swaying palms bracket the intermediate frame. And unlike some islands courses with all-star views, it seldom rains down here on the warm, Haleakala-protected southwestern shore of Maui.

            First 18: Players are in luck as Wailea comes at them with three courses—Blue, Emerald and Gold—each paradise-hued and offering a challenge suited to particular tastes and needs, from the hop-off-the-plane, this-is-a-great-warm-up cheer of Blue to the top-shelf challenge of Gold on over to the underrated cool of Emerald.

I am going to be blunt.  I am going to be succinct, at least for one paragraph:

The slow-play rot that is crippling the game is incurable given current capabilities.

Truth.

The USGA and others can run all the PSAs they can muster, every course in the land can have a sign in the pro shop blustering about a 4:20 play expectation, but until the malefactors are hit where it hurts, either in the wallet or by being benched, the times they aren’t a-changin’.

This is America, not Scotland.

And that sucks.

Fault can be rather evenly distributed. Some course operators simply don’t care how badly jacked up the course gets, seeing dollar signs simply in people sent to the first tee, not in how many return to 18 timely, with a smile and a desire to visit again. Many American Golf Corporation facilities come to mind in this capacity.

Owners clamoring for jacked-up, excessively-long, postcard-grade courses are at fault, too. Not every course can or should be TPC Sawgrass.

Tour pros get a big dose of the blame. Jim Furyk seems a true upstanding citizen, but his tortuously convoluted routine on the green makes the last “minute” of a basketball game go by in a nanosecond. He’s not even the worst malefactor.  If Monday hackers want to emulate Sunday heroes, fine; make Rickie Fowler the exemplar, not J.B. Holmes. And don’t get me started on the LPGA, where there appears to be a local rule that players are not allowed to align themselves.

And then there are recreational players, themselves. This one’s a bit dicier, and it’s a problem that has crept into all facets of life – we’re self-centered and rude. Even in our genteel game there are enough self-possessed apes, who think paying a green fee gives them carte blanche to dawdle and play it all the way back and be wankers, to more than gum up the works.

It’s easy to tear down. Let’s build:

Use a Stick, Not a Carrot. Don’t waste hot air talking about how long each hole should take to play.  EVERYONE gets out of position from time to time. When a group comes off the 9^th green, that’s where you lower the boom. If they are off time, not just out of position, ‘cause maybe that group out ahead is made of rabbits, they’re done for the day. The procedure was explained at check in, no one can argue.  Send ‘em packing with a half-off voucher for a future play. The players who care about pace of play soon will flock to the course and if the turtles never return, so much the better.

Players are Like Dogs; Give Them Fewer Squirrels to Chase. Yes, Mr. Developer, your monument to your small manhood and big ego can play to 7,600 yards, and you can set it up that way the first time the USGA brings the Amateur or Open to your joint. Until then, reprint scorecards, change tee signs, set the tips to 6,500 yards and let grass reclaim the two options back of there. This strategy will legitimately cover 95 percent of the people likely to show up, and when the sticks do come for a play, they know par is just a silly number anyway. This won’t deter all the goons. It will give them less real estate within which to get lost.

There are No Tee Standards. Every course needs at least one rated composite setting, choosing the nastier holes for “reduction,” and meaningful forward tees—at least two sets.  If hazards and doglegs are in play for someone playing his or her ability-appropriate tees, that’s golf; don’t just mow something flat 100 yards closer to the green. Oh, get rid of cutesy naming schemes for various tee sets and lose the “girly” red and teal colors, too.

Panacea? Of course not. Operators have let this go on too long; I’ve seen far more marshals drive away from an obvious case of congestion than wade in to effectively sort it out. It’s time to reclaim the lost territory. Some will find this type of thinking too far outside the box, though it seems mind-numbingly simple. It will require diligence and commitment on the part of course operators, most of whom, for all the saber-rattling, don’t actually want to play cop. But golf already has similar “rules” that all but the most idiotic follow, and demanding adherence to pace of play is no different than, say, enforcing a path-only day. (And that would not be required if developers didn’t care more about real estate than sport.)

Golf is withering as a participation sport. The putative leaders of the game are so damn wrapped up in whether or not to admit women into their exclusive domains and doing battle with non-existent specters that they can’t or won’t deal with one of the three anchors dragging us all down, pace of play. (Cost and difficulty round out the trio.) The stuffed shirts of the USGA, R&A and at Augusta National always will have their private playlands, no matter how many of us quit the game and don’t take it up in the first place.

And, ironically, I bet there are no five-hour rounds at Merion.

There are where the vast majority of us play.

Forget the needless lip service, let's really turn back the clock

The anchored putter is dead. Long live the anchored putter.

Baby/bathwater, forest/trees, cart/horse; choose whatever cliche you like as golf’s governing bodies again are making a mountain out of a mole hill and stepping over a dollar to pick up a dime. If the anchored putter is going away, I say simply: USGA, R&A it is way too late to worry about closing that barn door.

The Virginal White will tell you a broomhandle putt is not a stroke because the club is anchored to the body. That’s why, they claim, this is different than all the other genie-is-out-of-the-bottle crap that the R&A and USGA have willingly chosen to ignore for eons. A rock become a featherie become a guttie become a Haskell become balata become a ProV1 is evolutionary, not revolutionary, not erosive of the very foundation of the noble game. What rationalizing rot.

We are to believe a shaft is a shaft is a shaft, whether made of hickory or steel, graphite or bullshitium, tipped or spined, tweaked or flighted. Sheep give way to triplex mowers, pasture to heated and air-conditioned greens; the game’s virtue remains intact. Sarazen can glob gobs of metal on a club, turning a plow into an airplane wing yet you can’t stick the end of a putter in your gut or sternum?

Not sold?  OK, try this one:  “It doesn’t look like golf.”

And 500-yard par 4s that guys reach with wedge does?

Far Hills, we have a problem here, and it goes by the name “Reactionary Imbecility.”

Now I don’t use a long putter, so I don’t have that particular dog in this fight. In fact, I use a putter that is far shorter than the industry standard, what we will assume is the sanctified aesthetic high-water mark. Talk about a putting advantage. If you want to get a leg up on the opposition shag your ass down to the local golf shop and get properly fitted for a putter; I’ll all but guarantee you it will be shorter than so-called standard, the lie angle probably won’t be–here’s that arcane concept again– standard (which is what’s wrong with arbitrary standards in the first place). So forget the witch’s conveyance. I have gone from the worst putter in my decades-long playing group to the best, and it wasn’t because of Dave Pelz (though I will give a shout out to something logically simple that Dave Stockton said).

Oh gray-haired self-styled saviors of the game, thank you so for allowing  NASA-grade fitting diagnostics.

Golf isn’t a union shop. The only dues you are required to pay come in the form of sweat and toil. The only limitation on your employment is your ability to perform.  If you don’t glow in the dark like Lance Armstrong; if you freely admit to your playing partners that your ball moved when you accidentally stepped on it while back in the mesquite taking a leak and you replaced it with penalty stroke added–why should you not be able to use an implement that offers no statistically significant advantage over the alternative? I don’t care if your putter is long enough for the grip to have teeth marks and neither should the Weenies of the Rules. This one’s just a non-starter

Is it really because the self-anointed purists think it looks bad?  Please. Remember the salts of the game going after Casey Martin? The one’s clamoring how golf is an athletic endeavor of sweat, toil and fatigue while they drove around the Grumps Tour in the very same carts they felt Martin should be denied on the PGA Tour. Et tu, Arnie and Jack, err, Brute?

Actually, they’re right, it does look bad, atrocious, actually.

Ban the cart!

Timberlake out in Vegas.

The horror.

Las Vegas’ tourney long has played like a carnival pony in the Triple Crown that is the PGA Tour schedule. At the charitable level, the event certainly has helped with a number of causes. But the tour, sponsors and tournament organizers want Secretariat and sick kids getting a helping hand shown in a very public way.

The former has been lacking in Vegas’ annual non-show. And that’s seemingly ironic in a town with the buzz of Sin City, until you realize it’s really a small huge town of 1 million souls owing to its fundamental idiosyncrasies.  Tourists ain’t taking time out from crappy buffets and penny slots to attend a golf tournament, and the type of broad local support that makes PGA Tour events work in far tinier villes is simply lacking in such a transient megalopolis.  What soon no longer will be known as the Justin Timberlake Shriners Hospitals for Children Open has been floating around largely rudderless for years now, changing format, venues, identity like a four-act, two-performances-per-night showgirl. Actually, Timberlake allowed the wandering non-spectacle to catch a breather, and brought in some much needed coin to the bottom line.

Come this Sunday, he’s out. Apparently he’s no ringing enough cash registers.

Sure, he might not being doing enough heavy lifting, but the tourney’s desire to take the next step certainly was not limited by the avid-golfer singer.  Reality bites, sometimes quite hard.

The PGA Tour if not golf itself long ago left behind the day of the “star” on the marquee, let alone when there is zero history attached to it; hell, the beloved Hope lost most of its steam years before the name game down and the Clambake is a spectacle that excels despite Bill Murray and Chris Berman, not because of the ghost of Bing.

The tournament wants more. It wants to be a first-tier player, not one of the stepchild opposite-field-like events (and it doesn’t even run up against a WGC or Open Championship). The premise is good: Bigger presence equals more money for charity. But to what end? The tournament is overestimating what it has.  In a world of Rivieras, Muirfield Villages and Harbour Towns, TPC Summerlin doesn’t stack up; fun member play, some cool risk/reward, unremarkable as a playpen for the best players in the world (and the lion’s share of the field scratching to avoid season-ending relegation to the minors).

More critically, too much credence is being given to the event’s position in the upcoming split-year PGA Tour “year.”  Some of the biggest names annually skip Kapalua, with its guaranteed check, stunning course, perfect weather and family-friendly enviro–sorry, Phil, I’m a fan but you are doing nothing but whining when it comes to the wind and your game prep–and Vegas ain’t Maui, not by any stretch of the imagination.  None of the big guns that turn little engines that could into steamrolling juggernauts are gonna give a rip if they get a “late” start to the wholly fabricated Fed Ex Cup season when they continue to skip the tourney in the future. They don’t need the coin, they don’t need the early-season points. To them, it still will prove to be the undercard portion of the season coming in the wake of what matters–the fourth major, the faux/big coin playoffs, the Ryder/Prez cups–and preceding what they want, namely some down time, excluding those who of course scamper off to chase seven-figure appearance fees overseas.

Go ahead, think big, dream. But let’s be practical; not everyone can be a spectacle along the lines of a Waste Management Phoenix Open or a cash cow like the HP Byron Nelson Championship.

As Ty Webb suggests, there’s nothing wrong with working in a lumberyard.

A funny thing happened on the way to a five-plus hour round:  I found a course representative who cared less about the snail’s pace of play than the golfing mollusks causing it.

Make that several course representatives.

So with all the heartfelt respect I can muster, let me just say thank you SO very much Summitpointe and American Golf Corporation.

I recently played a portion of a round at Summitpointe, an AGC course in Milpitas, CA.  I say a portion because after  300 minutes on the course, sitting on the 16^th tee with two groups ahead of us on the hole, and the gang from 15 set to arrive in seconds, we quit.  Packed it in.  Invoked the Duran Rule.

Golf is withering.  Courses are closing.  Players are fleeing the game. Kajillions of new projects stuttered, then stopped, then died.  Sure, it’s the economy, stupid.  One-time core golfers and wannabe golfers tell a different story: It’s the time, idiot.  Cost, difficulty, lingering antediluvian attitudes; toss ‘em aside — we ain’t playin’ because we can’t get out, around and done in anything less than five, nearly six sweeps of Mickey’s small hand.

Enter Summitpointe.

Sitting on the 10^th tee, waiting for the 12 players ahead of us on the hole, we were approached by a course “ambassador,” the same one who previously drove by – twice, for good measure – without pausing to attempt to sort through the mess that was anywhere from 12-16 folks in various states of so-called play on the same hole.

“When did you tee off?” our caring steward of goodwill inquired.

“11:06,” I said.

“That’s impossible,” I was told, since it’s obvious I’m a miscreant and a sociopath who lies about such things.

“That would be 2:45 minutes ago,” I gently offered, thinking perhaps he’d missed the time change way back when.

“Can’t be,” he mumbled while scribbling on his time sheet before driving off … to the front nine.

It’s an American Golf Corporation facility, in case any of you missed the obvious signs.

After our roundette, I chatted up a gentleman who announced himself as other than a worker bee.  I told him of what we’d seen and experienced – and not experienced – including our finding that upon driving in we found an additional three groups on 17 and not a soul in sight on 18.

Various pleasantries aside, I was told, in so many and exact words:  “We don’t care.”

Thank you, Summitpointe.

Here’s the gist of Summitpointe’s/AGC’s argument:  I was an aggrieved visitor who obviously would never return.  If the course asked the offending glaciers to move along or, heresy of heresies, pick up, those players might not return. The difference? They were regular players. So the business model is to cater to slow play.

As I was brought up to never criticize without a solution to offer, I suggested that enforced play would lead to faster rounds, an enhanced reputation, more play and a healthier bottom line.

I’m not a PGA of America member or apprentice, I don’t have an MBA; my logic is faulty, of course.

“We understand, pace of play is a huge problem for the game, we hear it all the time,” came the retort. “But if we remove players, or ask them to speed up, they’ll get mad, and we’re not in business to offend our customers.”

Play Dead America.

Greater Palm Springs is known for golf -- #16 at SilverRock Resort in La Quinta, here -- and a whole lot more

About the time cool was invented, the Rat Pack was lounging poolside, martini in hand, in Palm Springs.  Cool never really left, and today it is wrapped in the guise of Coachella, a revival of the Mid-century modern architecture that was the backdrop to Frank and Dean’s playtime, and an enviable getaway lifestyle that long ago broke out from the shadow of the San Jacinto Mountains and swept eastward 30-plus miles across a valley become vacationland, taking in Rancho Mirage, Palm Desert, Indian Wells, La Quinta and several other cities.  So come chill, California desert-style.

Sheets

Orbit In is one of a number of Palm Springs hotel hideaways where retro-revival design resonates (562 W. Arenas, Palm Springs, 760-323-3585). The desert’s largest resort, JW Marriott Desert Springs goes boldly grand over coyly boutique in the mid-valley landscape (74855 Country Club Drive, Palm Desert, 760-341-2211). La Quinta Resort & Club was hosting the hip well before anyone else in the desert, going all the way back to the 1920s (49499 Eisenhower Drive, La Quinta, 760-564-4111).  California Mission is the look here.

Eats

Shanghai Red’s is the cannery row dive bomb-y iteration of a small family of outstanding, desert-fave fishhouses; swimmers come in fresh daily from the nearby Pacific. (235 S. Indian Canyon Drive, Palm Springs, 760-322-9293) Open, airy and buzzing at all times, year-old LuLu California Bistro has an ecletic all-meals menu that might run as long as the establishment’s daily 12-hour happy hour (200 S. Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs 760-327-5858). For tastes of the Far East in the heart of the tony West, set a course for Thai at Bangkok 5 (70026 Highway 111, Rancho Mirage, 760- 770-9508). Desert life is active life so start the day on the right foot with a morning fill-up at Louise’s Pantry (47150 Washington Street, La Quinta, 760-771-3330).

After Dark

House, alt/rock, electro keep Coachella alive during non-Fest times at The Date Shed at Empire Polo Grounds (50725 Monroe Street, Indio, 760-775-6699).  Amigo Room at ACE Hotel, a classic-era Howard Johnson turned in getaway spot, spins a mix of DJ and live music and shakes cocktails classic and avant (701 E. Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs, 760-325-9900). If gambling’s the ticket, Indian casinos spread across the valley, including Agua Caliente (32250 Bob Hope Drive, Rancho Mirage, 888-999-1995) and Fantasy Springs (84245 Indio Springs Drive, Indio, 800-827-2946).  The Wine Bar at Old Town beckons down in the La Quinta Cove; check for tastings and musical events (78015 Main Street, La Quinta, 760-564-2201).

Out and About

Forget the tired muni, publicly owned golf here does stuff like, oh, host PGA Tour events, and three of the best not only here but in the nation are Desert Willow Golf Resort (38995 Desert Willow Drive, Palm Desert, 760-346-7060), Indian Wells Golf Resort (44500 Indian Wells Lane, Indian Wells, 888-753-1270) and SilverRock Resort (79179 Ahmanson Lane, La Quinta, 760-777-8884).  Go from sand to snow in a matter of minutes aboard the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway (One Tram Way, Palm Springs, 888-515-8726).  Andreas, Murray and Palm and Tahquitz—the Indian Canyons—are  the ancestral and spiritual homes to the Cahuilla and where guided and self-hikes range from short to arduous take in hidden waterfalls and palm oases (Downtown Palm Springs, 760-323-6018, 760-416-7044 .  Is it a world-class museum, zoo or botanical garden dedicated to plants and animals of arid spaces?  Yes. The Living Desert (47900 Portola Avenue, Palm Desert, 760-346-5694).

What’s In the ‘Hood?

To know the desert is to know it is a land of abundant diversity, not scarcity, and few if any desert spaces are as rich and hauntingly beautiful as Joshua Tree National Park (park entrances are 45-60 minute northeasterly of Palm Springs, 760-367-5500).  Nearly 150 quality-not-schlock retailers make Cabazon’s Desert Hills Premium Outlets and Cabazon Outlets must-stops for the shop brigade (20 minutes west of Palm Springs/45 from La Quinta on I-10, 951-849-6641, 951-922-3000). One of America’s greatest drives, Palms to Pines Scenic Byway, winds from near-sea-level desert floor to mountain ceiling and back in about four score miles, hundreds of sweeping turns and countless smiles (Hwy 74, Hwy 243 and I-10 from Palm Desert to Idyllwild, Banning and back to the desert). Drop the top.

What a Ben Will Bring in the Desert

• Three-hour open-air Hummer tour of desert oasis and San Andreas Fault. (Adventure Hummer Tours, 760-285-0876).
• A round of golf at the desert’s best least-known course, Desert Dunes (19300 Palm Drive, Desert Hot Springs, 760- 251-5370).
• One-day high-performance road or mountain bike rental for two.  The Coachella Valley has hundreds of miles of dedicated and multi-use bike trails, both on- and off-road. (Big Wheel Tours, 760-779-1837).
• 80-minute Swedish massage at Miracle Springs, a true mineral-spring-fed spa in the north valley (10625 Palm Drive, Desert Hot Springs, 760-251-2069).

Want to learn more?  Check out Insiders’ Guide to Palm Springs, 2d Edition

A funny name and a ton of game: RocketBallz

As it has been SO long since any golf was played and broadcast on TV, here are a few thoughts to chew on while enduring your Kelly Tilghman anxiety separation:

PING Boss Sings a Discordant Tune:  John Solheim doesn’t want to “bifurcate” the rules.  Yet he wants the game to sanction three different gradients of golf ball, altering playing characteristics to the benefit/detriment of certain players?  I know “bifurcate” is a big PBS-type word.  So let’s cut through the crap.  The PING CEO wants a three-ball rule. 3 > 1 = bifurcated.  (Trifurcated, actually.)

A Voice in the Wilderness: Brandel Chamblee will continue to be the most reasoned, astute and pointed voice in golf.  Thankfully.  A hunk of the golf press will continue to supplicate itself and journalistic integrity to Tiger Woods.  Sadly.

What’s in a Name?  Truth, Perhaps. I love TaylorMade’s new RocketBallz irons.  Seriously.  Not in love with the name, so let’s go with the shorthand:  RBZ.  Now I know my game needs improvement.  But I still play mid-assist forged Mizunos because it is way too easy to get sloppy with most of the boat anchors on chains that are “game-improvement irons.”  (And RBZ has the jacked up lofts that have become the silly bane of club design, but rather than gripe simply add another wedge or two down below and maintain the gaps; it is all about gaps.)  These puppies fly easily, they fly true and they fly high–something I’d like to play with by sticking KBS Tour C-Tapers in the set.  What separates them from the pack is that I can tell what’s going on where.  That is way cool.  And rare in this realm.

Can We Have Halftime at the Start of the Game? I’ve long enjoyed the season-opening Insert-Carmaker-Name-Here Tournament of Champions, and particularly since it moved to Kapalua, where the views probably exceed the golf.  Too mas. With the Euros straddling 1/1 for their “annual” body of work and seemingly weekly Silly Season events, I’m not ready.  And I don’t care which millionaire is struggling to keep his livelihood alive in the fall.  Plus, since PGA HQ still hasn’t figured it out after eons, the weather during the West Coast tourneys’ swing through CA and AZ is when we experience our worst weather.  What’s the rush?  Something needs to give.

California Gold: Over the holidays I finally had a go at CordeValle.  Even without the mantel of nature—as I said above, we do have winter in CA—that makes the aesthetic so special, this in one thoughtful design.

Finally, it wouldn’t be new year without a lie, so for 2012 I vow to shun the buggy whenever possible and walk.  Whenever possible.