Capelle On Golf

2008 Masters Coverage - thru 4/15

Maybe it was the Par 3 Tournament that got the activist in me going. Nah, I think it happened long before that, but the Par 3 event ignited the flame for this year’s Masters. But darn it, when I see how a common sense change can improve the fan’s experience, I feel compelled to write about it.

Let’s see – so far I’ve written that:

• The media needs to do its homework before running off at the mouth
• The Par 3 tournament needs an overhaul
• TV appears to be controlling the pairings
• The leaderboard is absent the key stats we fans crave

That brings us to our next topic of discussion – the leaderboard for the Masters. If you start looking for scores at PGA Tour.com, you’ll be sent to something called majorschampionships.com. There you will find a leaderboard plastered with the Titleist logo. It gets worse. Since the Golf Channel is presenting so much coverage, I thought I’d check out their leaderboard. Yikes! The Titleist logo is even bigger and bolder than at the previous site.

Now aren’t you a bit fed up with seeing the Titleist logo in big bold italics after each player’s name that uses it? It would seem, according to Titleist, that the ball the players use is more important than they are.

Its time to bring the ball giant down a peg or two. Of the 94 players in the field, 42 are using something other than a Titleist. Tiger Woods, who would never compromise his ball selection 1/10 of a percent, uses a Nike ball. So does K.J. Choi, #6. The number 2 and 3 players use Callaway, #7 uses Srixon, and #9 uses TaylorMade. That’s six of the world’s top 10 players that don’t use a Titleist ball.

The Balls of the Top 10
1 Tiger Woods — Nike
2 Phil Mickelson — Callaway
3 Ernie Els — Callaway
4 Steve Stricker — Titleist
5 Geoff Ogilvy — Titleist
6 K.J. Choi — Nike
7 Jim Furyk — Srixon
8 Adam Scott — Titleist
9 Justin Rose — TaylorMade
10 Vijay Singh — Titleist

Here’s another interesting stat: in the first round, 15 of the 52 Titleist users shot par or better (28.8%) compared to 17 (40.5%) that used the supposedly number 2, 3, 4 and so on rated balls.

Class Before Commercialism
There is a happy ending to this story, at least for this week anyway. You can find a Titleist logo free leaderboard at Masters.org. These are the good people who will also be bringing you 56 minutes out of every hour of live action over the weekend on CBS.

Titleist, enough already with the crass commercialism. Be good corporate citizens like the Masters committee and get those annoying logos off the leaderboard. Trust that we fans know that your ball is the #1 ball in golf, even if the number 1, 2, and 3 players in the world use another brand.