"John certainly gives it a good hit, doesn't he? My Sunday best is a Wednesday afternoon compared to him." 
~ Nick Faldo, on John Daly

The Ryder Cup: 22-24 September 2006

If you enjoy watching professional golf, there is no better event to watch than the Ryder Cup. It has been described by one sports journalist (who has covered the Olympics, The Superbowl, The World Series, All 4 Golf Majors and many other events) as the "one event that manages to continually live up to the hype that precedes it". This year, the 36th Ryder Cup will take place at The K Club, Straffan, Co. Kildare, Ireland from September 22 - 24th.

Drama, passion and intensity skyrocket when golfing multi-millionaires find themselves playing for team-mates and country, not just themselves. There is no other golf event of equal standing where the world's best go head-to-head, playing as hard as they can for prestige alone. This is bragging rights at its highest level.

One can argue that the President's Cup (USA vs. Rest of the World except Europe) provides equal entertainment, but the rivalry there pales compared to the real deal!

Davis Love III almost threw up on the 18th hole in his first singles match because he was so nervous, Mark Calcavecchia went into shock and began hyperventilating after he lost the final 4 holes to draw a match where he was 4 holes up with 4 to play -both these men are multiple Tour winners and Major champions.

The competition also brings the best golf out of the players. In 1983, with his match on the line, Ballesteros hit a 3-wood 240 yards from the bunker to the fringe of the green to draw with Fuzzy Zoeller. Many observers still rate that Ballesteros shot, under the circumstances, as one of golf's greatest pressure shots and Jack Nicklaus, the US captain that year, described it as, 'the finest shot I have ever seen'.

This year, the competition could be something special - why? Because it's being held for the first time in Ireland and for some reason or another, an Irish player has always played a special part. Eamonn Darcy, Christy O' Connor Jnr, Philip Walton, Paul McGinley have had the thrill of sinking crucial winning putts.

If you just watch one golfing event this year, make this the one.




Golf Equipment: PING

For the past 40 years, PING has occupied an enviable position as manufacturer of the easiest-to-hit game-improvement club.

Starting this month, we will be featuring an article on golf equipment, and what better brand to start with than PING. It's no exaggeration to say that this family owned company changed the Golf Club industry forever with its heel-toe balanced putters and colour-coded custom fit irons. Many designs today can trace their existence back to Karsten Solheim's imagination.

Karsten Solheim was a General Electric engineer when he took up the game of golf in 1954, and he immediately became a golfing enthusiast. But he found, to his despair, that he had a problem shared by millions of other duffers - he couldn't putt.

Most golfers would have accepted that fact, or given up the game, but not Solheim. As a mechanical engineer, he started examining the mechanics of putter construction and came up with the design for a highly superior putting instrument. Because his putter head put most of the weight on the toe and heel, leaving the middle almost a shell, it made a "ping" sound when it met the ball. So Karsten called it the Ping Putter. For years he made his putters by hand, but the demand became so overwhelming that he left General Electric in 1967 and established Karsten Manufacturing, where as chairman of the board, he presided over one of the miracles of modern business until his death in 2000.

PING now sells a complete golf club line through pro shops on every continent, it is the largest family-owned golf equipment company and its products are some of the most popular and playable in the industry. Solheim's name is now known throughout the golf world and is forever immortalized on the Solheim Cup, the ladies version of the Ryder Cup.

Ping also developed the concept of perimeter weighting, which distributes the weight of the iron to the outer edges to increase the sweet spot and allow more room for error. The Ping Eye2 (now out of production) is still the most commercially successful iron ever made and at its peak, customers waited up to 4 months to get their set.

Yet instead of creating frustrated consumers, the effort required to obtain Pings actually increased buzz for the clubs, creating a cult-like feel. "I remember in the late-'70s a musician needed some odd specs on a set of irons," says Leigh Bader, co-owner of Pine Oaks GC in South Easton, Mass., and 3balls.com, a large online golf store. "He waited 21 months for his clubs. If you owned Pings, you felt like you belonged to something."

Ping has always stood for leading edge engineering prowess, and the ability to apply sound design principles to make the game of golf easier and more pleasurable for the general public. "Karsten revolutionized club design," says veteran club designer John Hoeflich. "He looked at golf as pure engineering."
 

Musings - The Ryder Cup

For many, Seve was at his magical best representing Europe in the Ryder Cup.

The Ryder Cup in September promises to be an exciting event, and although it has always been a big deal to the competitors (Arnold Palmer lines up his 8 Ryder Cup golf bags in a display rack in his house) it only became interesting to the world at large when it became competitive, instead of the one-sided affair it had been before 1979.

In 1977, Jack Nicklaus urged the PGA of GB&I to widen team selection to include Europe and in 1979, a Spanish golfer named Severiano Ballesteros joined the team - and from that moment on, his name was forever linked to the competition.

Seve's fierce Spanish pride refused to acknowledge defeat based on paper statistics, and his belief infused the Europeans with confidence that finally led to victory in 1985. His Ryder cup exploits are legendary, and together with playing partner Jose Maria Olazabal, he formed the nigh-invincible "Spanish Armada", a team which only lost 2 matches out of 15.

One such example of his intensity was the match between them and Americans, Paul Azinger and Chip Beck, at Kiawah Island in 1991. Arguing over a rules decision, Azinger said: 'I can tell you we're not trying to cheat.' Ballesteros replied: 'Oh no. Breaking the rules and cheating are two different things.' The constant goading intensified their desire to win and it produced what is regarded as the best pairs match in history, the Spaniards winning 2&1.

Watching Seve play, when his game was at its lowest, in the 1995 Ryder Cup at Oak Hill was, for me, a showcase of golfing genius. With practically every drive ending in deep rough and unable to hit the green with a 9-iron, he somehow managed to conjure a victory with David Gilford in fourball and take Tom Lehman to the 15th Hole in singles (Tom Lehman hit 15 fairways out of 15 that day).

Europe has won 7 out of the last 10 Ryder Cups despite the fact that, on paper, they have always had the stronger team. Long may Seve's legacy of making the Ryder Cup competitive remain.