Callaway Golf Extends Endorsement Deal with Olin Browne
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Callaway Golf Company announced that it has re-signed PGA Tour player Olin Browne to a multi-year contract. Browne, 46, who in 1992 was the first PGA Tour player to sign on as Callaway Golf Staff Professional, will endorse Callaway Golf woods, irons and golf balls, carry a Callaway Golf logoed bag and wear the Company's logo on his hat.
Browne will continue to play the new science of distance with accuracy in the Big Bertha(R) Fusion(R) FT-3(TM) Driver and has added a Callaway Golf X 3-wood to his bag. His irons will remain the X-Tour(TM) Irons (3-9), he will play Forged+ Wedges and he, like many of his fellow Callaway Golf staffers, has switched to the improved HX.Tour Golf Ball for 2006.
"My contract was up last year and I had a banner year," said Browne, a three-time winner on the PGA Tour. "My first call was to Callaway to tell them I didn't want to go anywhere. It was a quiet deal because Callaway has been with me for a long time. It's a source of real pride for me to continue with the Company".
"I think with George Fellows on board as CEO we are going to go places that no one else ever imagined possible. Callaway Golf has always been on the cutting edge and made the best product available. There's an inner circle of golf knowledge and innovation there that you don't find anywhere else. I'm enthusiastic to continue with the relationship, and I want to stay with Callaway the rest of my career."During his career year in 2005, Browne captured the Deutsche Bank Championship in early September and finished second at the Valero Texas Open three weeks later. Prior to that he also had his best-ever showing in a U.S. Open, owning a share of the lead after the first two rounds at Pinehurst Country Club and starting the final round tied for second, just three shots off the lead. His $2.1 million in earnings last year represented nearly one-third of his career winnings.
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Seve to Retire
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It is the news that many were expecting long before now: Severiano Ballesteros, winner of five major titles, Ryder Cup inspiration on and off the course, and once the world's most revered golfer, has announced his retirement.
However, before Seve's fans go into mourning, he won't be hanging up his clubs until 2011, when he will be 54. By that time, he reckons, he will no longer have that legendary desire to beat the world, especially Americans, he has had for over three decades.
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Ballesteros won't exactly swap his sand-iron for a shovel, but after 2011 he will devote all of his time, instead of much of it, to course architecture
"I'm in the golf course design business. This is my future, in which I will put all my attention. I want to play golf and I like to compete, but I don't want to spend all my life just waiting in the room for the next day to come and then go out and compete. I've done this for 30 years. I'd rather go to a place where there is nothing and design a golf course. This will be a good legacy for me to leave."
For the next five years, though, if he can maintain his fitness - "I work out and I feel OK, considering all the travel I'm doing" - he does intend to compete, then bow out after just four years playing seniors golf on the US Champions Tour. "My intention is to compete until I'm 54. So if I join the Champions Tour, it will be only for four years, no more than that."
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Sun City Lures Sorenstam
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The prospect of playing at Sun City lured Annika Sorenstam, the world's number one, to the Women's World Cup of Golf.
Sorenstam and Liselotte Neumann are representing Sweden at the 20-nation event and will start as favourites at the par-72 Gary Player Country Club on Friday.
"I heard a lot about Sun City and I've always wanted to come to South Africa," Sorenstam told reporters. "I heard a lot of good things about last year (when the tournament was played at The Links course at Fancourt) and I felt like this was a tournament I didn't want to miss."
Sorenstam is making her first trip to South Africa and her first appearance at the World Cup of Golf, which is co-sanctioned by the Ladies European Tour (LET) and the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA).
The teams will compete over three rounds in better-ball strokeplay on Friday, foursomes on Saturday and individual strokeplay on the final day. The team with the combined lowest score after 54 holes will win the trophy.
Holders Japan are represented by last year's leading individual player Ai Miyazato and debutant Sakura Yokomine while the U.S. team of Natalie Gulbis and Paula Creamer will pose a big threat to Sweden.
But all eyes are on the world number one, who won 10 titles in 2005, including two majors, to take her career majors tally to nine since turning pro in 1994. The high expectations of Sweden have increased the pressure on the team and Neumann admitted to feeling slightly stressed.
"I think the pressure will change things," Neumann said. "You feel a little different than going out to play for yourself because it's for your country and a team mate. "But at the same time it's a fun kind of pressure because it's an honor to play for Sweden." Read More
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The First Golf Billionaire
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Tiger Woods leads The Golf Digest 50 list of the game's top earners, and he's well on his way to surpassing a sports milestone.
Less than a year after Tiger Woods turned professional and signed $60 million in multiyear endorsement contracts with Nike and Titleist, Alastair Johnston, the head of golf at International Management Group, let a wry smile creep across his face as he recalled the outrage over the riches being thrown at a 20-year-old golfer without a professional victory. "Do you know how we got so much for Tiger?" Johnston asked in the summer of 1997, after Woods had won six times on the PGA Tour, including the Masters by 12 strokes. "Because we asked for it. We knew what he was worth to the right people."
In the furious run-up to Woods' "Hello World" news conference on Aug. 28, 1996, many agents estimated that the three-time U.S. Amateur champion might get $6 million a year in deals. IMG got twice that by bringing into the talks Nike, a company that in 1996 had very few golfers on staff and no golf equipment to sell. They were, as Johnston said, "the right people." At a stockholder meeting in 2000, shortly after Tiger's deal with Nike was increased to $20 million a year for five years, Phil Knight, the co-founder and then CEO, was asked if there weren't a better way for the company to spend $100 million. Knight replied simply: "No."Five years later, Woods is on the verge of becoming golf's first $1 billion player, and perhaps the first billionaire to accumulate his wealth as an athlete. Continue reading this great Golf Digest Article
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Schoolgirl Michelle Backed to Make the Cut
Schoolgirl golf sensation Michelle Wie is being backed by 2003 US Open champion Jim Furyk to make the cut when she takes on the men at next week's Sony Open in her native Hawaii.
Wie has taken on the men six times before, but has so far failed to achieve that feat, which has not been achieved on one of the major men's tours by a woman since Babe Zaharias at the 1945 Los Angeles Open.
However, Furyk believes that the 16-year-old from Honolulu, golf's most celebrated teenager since Tiger Woods, can make history in her own backyard. 
He told reporters: "Michelle Wie's a great talent... I would not be surprised at all if she made the cut next week. She's definitely one in a million, or one in a billion, as a player.
"She hits it good and she's come within a shot of making the cut at least a couple of times. That's pretty special."
Wie suffered a late collapse to miss the cut at the PGA Tour's John Deere Classic last July and missed out by one stroke in November at the Casio World Open in Japan, her first men's tournament as a professional.
But Furyk believes the 16-year-old has a bright future in front of her, adding: "As a player, she's obviously going to keep getting better, keep maturing.
"She's going to start figuring things out.... I like the fact that she's a professional now getting an exemption."
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Tiger and Phil. Thanks but NO Thanks
When the 2 biggest names in men's golf don't show up for the 1st PGA tournament of the year, which is supposed to showcase the past winners from last year, what should the PGA do? What about the sponsor of the tournament Mercedes, which is in its last year of its contract? Apparently, neither Tiger nor Phil liked the greens at Kapulua, but the golf course just redid them all to make them better.
The $5.4 million Mercedes Championships isn't quite the same without certain members of the PGA Tour's Fab Four serenading golf fans along the Plantation Course fairways.
They like to say the tour season begins here, but without Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Ernie Els, one wonders if the true concert isn't several weeks away somewhere in Southern California.
Add Padraig Harrington and Retief Goosen to the MIA mix, and suddenly the only top 10 tour members teeing it up here tomorrow are second-ranked Vijay Singh, No. 6 Sergio Garcia and No. 7 Jim Furyk.
It's not exactly what tour commissioner Tim Finchem had hoped for as he continues negotiations with Mercedes to be the sponsor of this winners-only event that has opened the tour season since 1999.
This is the final year of the current contract and the fact Sony already has signed on the dotted line to remain on Oahu for four more years should give golf fans here pause. Continue Reading...
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Phil Mickelson's Year in Review
Phil's end of term report in his own words
The 2005 season is over, which means the next few weeks will be full of quality time for me and my family. It also means there will be time for thinking about the past season and how to make the next one even better.
It was a great year for me on the course. Two early wins confirmed once again that my off-season preparation schedule works and my Callaway equipment is the best I've ever had. The PGA Championship win reinforced the fact that my pre-majors preparation is invaluable. And that working overtime was both fun and stressful – coming from behind and taking a playoff at BellSouth on Monday and sleeping on a lead for five days at the PGA.
Aside from the PGA Championship win, there were other highlights. The second-round 60 at the FBR Open was my best score on tour and equaled the tournament record. The next week a 62 was the Spyglass Hill record and it put me in position to win the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. That combination of low scores and early wins gave me a lot of confidence for the year.
At the end of the season, playing in the Presidents Cup for Captain Nicklaus was a week I'll always cherish. He has done so much for the game and for each of us as tour pros that it was an honor to help give him his first Presidents Cup win. And it was great to be paired with my buddy Chris DiMarco and have it all come down to the last couple of matches on Sunday, especially after my not-so-hot performance in South Africa two years ago.
My schedule for the coming year will be very similar to the one I've had for the last couple of years, busy early building toward the Masters, prepping for the majors a couple of weeks in advance and of course looking forward to the Ryder Cup and playing for Captain Tom Lehman. I've known Tom for a long time. He's a good man and has some interesting ideas about captaining. I hope one of them is a DiMarco-Mickelson pairing.
Looking even farther ahead, there's been a lot written and said about the proposed schedule for 2007 and beyond. I really don't have enough information about it, so I really don't have an opinion about what might happen. I do think two things are important. Having the best players meeting consistently over a season that doesn't try to compete with football is key for our TV contract and to grow interest in our game. And having the PGA Tour commissioner and his people sell the new product to the players and make it happen.
My hat's off to Tiger for another incredible year, to Vijay for another nice season at age 42 and to Ryan Moore for getting his card in just eight events. I played with him four days altogether at Augusta and he's a guy to watch next year.
I know our family will be enjoying the holiday season and we certainly hope you do the same. Until next year, thank you for your support. And don't forget to work on your short game.
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Fred Funk in a Pink Skirt
Fred Funk laughs as he pulls on a floral pink skirt, given to him by Annika Sorenstam, left, after she outdrove him on the third hole on the first day of the Skins Game at Trilogy Golf Club in La Quinta, Calif., Saturday, Nov. 26, 2005.
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The Year of Tiger and Annika
No one should find it too difficult to name the first five winners on the 2006 European Tour as the events have already been played. David Howell, Paul Casey, Colin Montgomerie, Ernie Els and Retief Goosen are the players who are benefiting from a head start to the new season.
Luke Donald is another with reason to celebrate, even if his recent win in the 2005 Target World Challenge smacks of the past rather than the future.
Thanks to the latest feats of Howell, Casey, Montgomerie and Els, the outlook is promising for the Europeans in next year's Ryder Cup. Some say that the Americans will be at their most dangerous, having not won the match since Brookline in 1999. However, Keith Rushworth, one of the game's leading statisticians, has come up with a set of figures to subdue any good cheer among those Americans who defeated the Rest of the World in the 2005 President's Cup.
Non-Americans landed so many top-10 finishes on the USPGA Tour this year that 40 per cent of all Ryder Cup points were lost by the home players. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the figure was 15-25 per cent. Rushworth's opinion is that if the Americans lose at the K Club, they might well decide to revamp their selection system.
Overall, 2005 was as much about the stories behind the statistics as the statistics themselves. There was, for instance, nothing to compare with Jack Nicklaus' final appearance in the Open in a year when, since he had suffered the loss of a much-loved grandson in a drowning accident, nostalgia was laden with melancholy.
Nicklaus, who had won at St Andrews in 1970 and 1978 and was wearing a replica of the sweater he had worn on the latter occasion, missed the cut by two strokes on his farewell. But he bowed out in style, holing from 15 feet to birdie the 18th and bring his favourite crowd to their feet.
The cheers for Tiger Woods, Nicklaus' admirable successor, were on much the same scale as when the world No 1 won his second Open, and his 10th major, compared with Nicklaus' 18 major titles.
Another memorable image was the 18 holes' worth of warmth extended to Montgomerie as he finished second behind Woods. Scottish crowds are arguably the best-informed of all, but none who followed the Scot's every shot was harping back to the so-called 'Indonesian incident' in March, even though it had been splashed all over the papers. It occurred after an electrical storm sent him rushing for the clubhouse without marking his ball on a bunker's bank. The ball had disappeared by the following morning and Montgomerie, in replacing it, appeared to end up with an easier shot.
When shown film of the balls' differing positions, Montgomerie thought it did not look good and gave his prize-money to charity. Not everyone thought that went far enough but he felt that he had made suitable amends for an "unwitting" mistake.
The world at large seemed more interested in his winning an eighth Order of Merit. From 1993-99, when he captured his other seven, Montgomerie hit the ball left to right and was mostly anchored by a happy home life. From 1999 onwards, he tried, without success, to change his shape of shot and, at the same time, prop up a deteriorating marriage. In those years he slipped so far out of the reckoning that his world ranking had plummeted, from a high of second, into the 80s. It is now eighth.
In sorting himself out, Montgomerie left his wife, Eimear. Meanwhile, on the course, he returned to the left-to-right flight which so clearly works best for him.
If Woods wore the expression of 2004 - after Phil Mickleson put the American drive hard up against the out-of-bounds fence at Oakland Hills' 18th, in the Friday foursomes of the Ryder Cup - the face of 2005 belonged to Montgomerie. Nick Dougherty, his playing companion, was given a free drop from the front verge of a gaping bunker at the 16th in the Caltex Singapore Masters, because of the dangers presented by the railway sleepers shoring up the trap. Montgomerie looked sick. So sick that he was wise enough not to attempt to pretend all was well.
More than one player was reduced to tears this year: joy, in Paul McGinley's case, as he won the end-of-season Volvo Masters, but of unutterable misery for 16-year-old Michelle Wie at the Samsung event in California, her first tournament as a professional.
All had been well until she pulled up on the final day, believing herself to be fourth behind Annika Sorenstam - as dominant in the women's game as Woods in the men's. Instead, Wie was ferried out to the seventh hole after a journalist, Michael Bamburger from Sports Illustrated, reported an incorrect drop there on the Saturday morning.
Tournament officials concurred and Wie was disqualified, though the officials seemed rather more concerned about Bamburger's failure to report the incident on the day.
If he had, Wie would have been docked two shots and there would never have been any mention of the word disqualification.
Now, just as the Indonesian incident has receded for Montgomerie, so everything is back to normal for Wie. Or as normal as it can be for a teenager who the R & A deemed worthy of adjusting the regulations to allow women to qualify for the Open.
Courtesy of Telegraph.co.uk/mair
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Return of the Monty
In the world top 10 and with an eighth Order of Merit title in the bag, all Colin Montgomerie wants is time to wash the car... and a major title
It's not easy being Colin Stuart Montgomerie. Not easy coping with the driven ambition, not easy dealing with a private life that has been splashed here, there and everywhere, most of all it's not easy having nowhere to wash your car.
Despite a year in which the European Tour's most prominent golfer has recaptured the number-one title he last held in 1999 - at which point he had won a forever-and-a-day record seven Order of Merits - Monty is happy enough in some ways. But, post divorce, he is far from content, the enforced move from family life in the epicentre of the Surrey stockbroker belt to a central London pad still causing him problems, even if the apartment block was designed by one of Britain's greatest architects, Sir Norman Foster.
Do you know, I haven't washed my car for nearly two years,' he says. 'Well, you don't when you live in temporary accommodation and you park the car in an underground garage. Truth is, I miss washing my own car, miss having the time and the space to do that sort of mindless, ordinary job. Am I content? No, I won't be content until I can do that sort of thing again. What I want is to have a home and a proper front door to return to after a tournament and to have someone - I've no idea who - waiting on the other side.'
This is the Montgomerie you rarely see or hear, the vulnerable man inside the barricade built around the modern multi-millionaire sportsman. He occasionally displays a reassuring instinct to offer an honest answer to questions, no matter how transparently obvious the hidden agenda might be.
Some time ago, when Montgomerie's inability to keep his mouth shut upset some sponsor or other, the then chief executive of the European Tour, Ken Schofield, told me: 'Maybe the problem with Colin is not that he has an opinion but that he seems to have an opinion on everything.' What Schofield also knew, and appreciated, was that Montgomerie was vital to his tour's progress because, almost on his own a lot of the time, he has provided the oxygen of publicity to a game that sometimes can seem rather dull to those who view it from a distance and often with prejudice.
Continue reading "Return of the Monty"
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Vijay to Play Abu Dhabi
The Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority (ADTA) announced today that VIJAY SINGH, ranked No. 2 in the world, will play the inaugural Abu Dhabi Championship to be held at the Abu Dhabi National Course, January 19 – 22, 2006.
Mubarak Al Muhairi, Director General of the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority commented, “We are delighted that Vijay Singh, the World No.2, has decided to play the inaugural Abu Dhabi Golf Championship. His presence will add stature to an already impressive field of professionals.�
There has been no more improbable a success story in golf than that of Vijay Singh, whose career began in his native Fiji and has since spanned the globe. With three ‘major' Championship victories, the 1998 and 2004 US PGA Championships and the prestigious US Masters in 2000 under his belt, Singh had the year to end all years in 2004 winning nine tournaments on the US PGA Tour finishing the year as not only the leading money winner, but also World No. 1 for the first time in his career, ending Tiger Wood's five year reign.
Vijay, whose name means ‘victory' in Hindi and who traces his ancestors to India, has won on four continents and has triumphed in 16 countries from Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Korea to Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Morocco, Zimbabwe and South Africa and on to Sweden, Italy, Spain, Germany, France and England. He arrived on the PGA Tour in the United States in 1993 and won in his very first year while gaining ‘Rookie of the Year' honours. Now with 28 PGA Tour victories, along with 22 international triumphs, he has amassed some $35 million in worldwide career earnings. Known for his work ethic and long hours on the practice range, Singh has been a model of consistency and his string of 53 events without missing a cut was the fifth longest in PGA Tour history.
This year, Vijay has won three times on the US PGA Tour and with another 15 top 10 finishes, is without doubt the most consistent golfer in the world today.
Surprisingly, for one of the most widely travelled golfers in the game, Vijay has never played in the Gulf before. Commenting on his decision to add Abu Dhabi to his long list of countries visited, Vijay said
“I have heard good things about Abu Dhabi and the golf course and am looking forward to seeing it for myself in January. With players like Sergio, Monty, John Daly and Thomas Bjorn already entered, it looks like it’ll be a tough tournament – but that’s how I like them!�.
In all, there will be 120 players in the statutory field for the Championship, which is offering US$2 million in prize money and will be televised world wide.
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Gary Player - Man With a Mission or Three
When a man reaches the biblical and stately age of three score years and 10, it would not be unreasonable to suppose that he might have an inkling to take things a little bit easy. Not Gary Player. At the age of 70 - his birthday was on November 1 - Player is still driven by dreams and missions and he is still doing with a passion all those things that he loves the most - playing golf competitively all over the world, building homes for his ever-growing family, designing new golf courses and refurbishing old ones, being an ambassador extraordinaire for South Africa and, above all, trying to be a force for good wherever he can.
'I still have that passion to compete'
Player may have one or two more lines of experience on his ever-tanned face and there may be some distinguished streaks of grey in his neatly-slicked coiffure, but the eyes are undimmed, the vigour as unbounded as it ever was.
| And the urge to pursue his ambitions remains as fierce as ever. The man who has travelled something like 25 million kilometres in his quests for glory, for gain and for good has just returned to South Africa from another trip around the world, completed in just 13 days, on various business ventures. |  |
Player was in the Cape recently to pursue another of his abiding passions - creating another home for his family.
This new home is a legendary place, 25ha of land set among the vineyards of the estate of Boschendal on the slopes of the Simonsberg, near Franschhoek, with panoramic views across the Dwarsrivier Valley.
Player is one of the first buyers of a "Founders Estate" at Boschendal, one of 20 plots ranging in size from 20 to 40ha, each with only one home. Player's son, Marc, is also one of the "founders".
Continue reading "Gary Player - Man With a Mission or Three"
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Tiger Joins the Over Thirties
THE numbers add up for Tiger Woods, just as they always have: $US55.7 million ($A74 million) in earnings on the PGA Tour, $US67.9 million ($A90 million) worldwide, 46 victories on the PGA Tour, 17 more worldwide, 10 major championship titles, seven times voted by his peers as player of the year.
There's one more important number. He turns 30 on December 30. Tiger? 30? It doesn't seem possible. Even so, he will begin his 10th full year on the PGA Tour in the second week of January.
When he looked into the television cameras, said, "Hello, world," before his pro debut at the 1996 Greater Milwaukee Open, only days after having won his third consecutive US Amateur championship, Woods was 20. It was only the start of what became a clear-cut Tiger decade.
"If you look at most of the guys' careers, it looks like their peak years are in their 30s," Woods said last week. "Hopefully, that'll be the case for me. Obviously, there's a lot deeper competition, a lot more work I need to get done.
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